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Xiaodong Wang received his B.Sc. in Biology from Beijing Normal University in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1991 from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical center, where he completed his postdoctoral research in 1995. He later worked at Emory University for one year followed by an appointment at the University of Texas in 1996, where he proceeded to hold the George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science until 2010. In 1997, he was also appointed as an Assistant Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical institute. He has been the Director of the National Institute of Biological Sciences at Beijing since 2010.

Professor Wang is a member of several editorial boards and professional societies and has published over 50 articles in well-established scientific journals. He is also the recipient of several awards and honors.

Wang’s work focuses on specific loss of cell vitality during animal development and adult life, which is an important part of normal animal physiology. Defects in such a process are the cause of many human diseases. These forms of cell death are executed by specific biochemical programs within the dying cell, thus termed regulated cell death. Wang’s laboratory has been primarily responsible for illustrating the biochemical pathways of two such forms regulatory of cell death in mammals, i.e. apoptosis and necrosis. Most remarkably, Wang’s laboratory discovered the role of mitochondria, the classical viewed powerhouse and metabolic center of eukaryotic cells, in apoptosis in mammalian cells. Specifically, his laboratory discovered that cytochrome c, a component of mitochondrial electron transfer chain, is able to trigger the activation of apoptotic caspases once released from the mitochondria. Apoptotic caspases are intracellular proteases that are normally kept in inactive forms in living cells. Once activated, these proteases execute apoptosis, a morphologically distinctive form of cell death. Professor Wang’s group also identified the cytosolic cytochrome c receptor Apaf1, and a member of the caspase protein family, caspase-9, as the initiator caspase that is directly activated by the Apaf-1/cytochrome c protein complex termed apoptosome. In addition to cytochrome c, Wang’s group also discovered Smac, another mitochondrial intermembrane protein that neutralizes caspase inhibition imposed by the inhibitor of apoptotic proteins, IAPs.

Based on Smac’s molecular mechanism functioning, Professor Wang and his collaborators designed a small molecule mimetic of Smac protein that is cell permeable and directly sensitizes treated cells for apoptosis. The Smac mimetic led them to the finding that in some cell types, a caspase-independent form of programmed cell death occurs in the presence of Smac mimetic in response to tumor necrosis factor family of cytokines or toll-like receptor ligands. Their laboratory subsequently identified the receptor interacting kinase 3, RIP3, and its substrate, a pseudokinase MLKL, as the core biochemical components of this form of necrotic cell death, also called necroptosis. Necroptosis is now recognized to have potential roles in many degenerative diseases and normal aging in male reproductive system.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Allen Bard received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from New York City College in 1955, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1956 and 1958, respectively. He joined the University of Texas as an instructor in 1958 and rose through the academic ranks to the Professorship of Chemistry in 1967. He held many endowed positions including the Sherman Mills Fairchild Scholar at California Institute of Technology and Woodward Visiting Professor at Harvard University. He has been the Hackerman-Welch Regents Chair in Chemistry, since 1985, and the Director of the Center for Electrochemistry at the University of Texas, since 2006.

While Professor Bard’s research has been focused on the field of electrochemistry, it has also broadly impacted all subdisciplines of chemistry as evident by his co-discovery of electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) in 1965, and its subsequent impact and development. He discovered that emissive excited states could be generated at electrode surfaces through highly energetic electron-transfer reactions. Professor Bard invented the scanning electrochemical microscope (SECM) in 1987, which has been used for very high-resolution electrochemical analysis and fabrication of surface reactions. His recent work has been focused on single-molecule electrochemistry, the application of electrochemical methods for display technologies, the study of individual catalyst particles and molecular electronics.

Professor Bard has published over 900 papers and 8 books, and holds more than 20 patents. He is a member of the editorial boards of several journals, including Journal of the American Chemical Society, Electrochimica Acta, New Journal of Chemistry, and NANO. He held leadership positions in several professional organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Bard has received numerous honors and awards including National Medal of Science, Olin-Palladium Medal and Priestley Medal.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Jean Frechet obtained his BSc. in Chemical Engineering from Institut de Chimie et Physique Industrielles, Lyon, France in 1967, followed by an MS and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Syracuse University, USA in 1969 and 1971, respectively. Then he joined the University of Ottawa in Canada from 1973 to 1987; he was also appointed as a Visiting Scientist at IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose, CA, USA, from 1979 to 1983. He joined Cornell University as IBM Professor of Chemistry from 1987 to 1997, and was appointed as Peter J. Debye Chair of Chemistry from 1993 to 1997. Professor Frechet joined the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 and held several academic positions including a Scientific Director of the Molecular Foundry of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and in 2011, he was named Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the same university. He was also appointed as a Senior Vice President of Research, Innovation & Economic Development at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia from 2010 to 2019. 

Professor Frechet co-developed the concept of chemically amplified photoresists with Grant Willson, thereby opening a new era in the fabrication and miniaturization of microelectronic devices, which have been the basis of nearly all the world’s microelectronic devices that have been made in the last two decades. His work on dendrimers has been used to explore a host of applications including the delivery of therapeutic materials. Similarly, the work done on macroporous polymers led to their quick commercialization for use in chemical and biological separations. Professor Frechet later developed innovative polymeric carriers for both drugs and vaccines as well as explored the fundamental design of electroactive polymers used today for organic field-effect transistors and solar cells.

Professor Frechet has published over 880 papers and holds over 100 patents. He is a member of the editorial boards of several journals and scientific Committees, and has also received numerous honors and awards including the Dickson Prize of science, Herman Mark Award, Nagoya Gold Medal, Grand Prix de la Maison de la Chimie and Japan Prize.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.