Ohio State professor of organic chemistry David Nagib points toward a Buchi Heating Bath B-490, a device used primarily for heating samples in a controlled manner. In “The Nagib Lab,” it is used to evaporate solvents. Credit: Sandra Fu | Photo Editor
If David Nagib wasn’t an organic chemist, he would’ve been an architect.
Nagib’s passion for both fields stems from a childhood love for LEGOs, which taught him how to construct and innovate.
Now, as an Ohio State professor of organic chemistry, Nagib channels his creativity into groundbreaking research in organic chemistry. Just this month, he made history as the first faculty-level researcher from Ohio State, as well as one of just six chemists nationwide, to be selected as a finalist for the 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists — an annual award celebrating contributions of faculty members and researchers under age 42 who work in disciplinary categories including life sciences, physical sciences and engineering and chemical sciences, according to its website.
Though Nagib did not walk away with the ultimate prize, he said being recognized as a finalist was a reward in and of itself.
“I think [the honor is] a validation of what we’re doing right here and an encouragement to keep doing it,” Nagib said. “I think in science, what makes me passionate about [it] is that every year, you’re doing something harder and cooler than the year before.”
Kamala Murthy, senior communications manager at The New York Academy of Sciences, said the award program’s goal is to spark innovation and address scientific problems — including but not limited to mutation-caused diseases, climate change’s effect on Arctic ice, the ocean and seafloor, crop resilience and neurological diseases — by supporting young, creative, risk-taking scientists. The Blavatnik Awards are funded by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and administered by The New York Academy of Sciences, Murthy said.
The Blavatnik Awards also grant each honoree a $15,000 minimum of unrestricted scientific prize money, according to its website.
“We’ve heard all kinds of stories of where the money has enabled and funded research that has been rejected by [National Institutes of Health] grants or government funding,” Murthy said. “It allows the scientists to kind of go [out] on a limb and do risk-taking research they wanted to pursue.”
In Nagib’s lab, aptly named “The Nagib Lab” — located on the 3rd floor of the CBEC building — his research involves working with radicals. These extremely reactive molecules — which are more reactive than those seen in other synthetic labs on campus or around the world — can be both helpful and harmful, he said.
For example, Nagib said some chemotherapy drugs can generate radicals in the body. These drugs are designed to target and kill cancer cells, and they often work by creating radicals and other reactive molecules that damage the DNA of those cells, leading to their ultimate deaths.
“Everybody thinks these free radicals are high-energy,” Nagib said. “But after a decade of doing this, we realized, yes, but in different ways. In a way, some are hot and some are cold.”
Nagib also works with carbenes — molecules often considered too reactive to easily handle — to form complex molecules that can be used in medications.
Nagib said he develops catalysts that help manage highly reactive radicals, guiding their reactions to achieve desired outcomes, much like traffic lights that direct the flow of traffic in order to prevent accidents. Nagib said for carbenes, catalysts are used to stabilize the molecules, allowing them to participate in useful reactions without breaking apart, acting as a safety net for effective interactions.
By managing the reactions of reactive molecules like radicals and carbenes, catalysts are used to help create more reliable and complex drug compounds that have fewer side effects, Nagib said. These catalysts allow scientists to control the chemical reaction at hand, reducing unwanted by-products and increasing production of the desired drugs.
“How do you make 10 steps become one step?” Nagib said. “That’s kind of what the power of catalysis allows you to do, [taking] shorter paths that just don’t exist yet.”
Nagib said pharmaceutical companies often use these newly developed catalysts to solve problems such as slow development times and ineffective medications, ultimately benefiting patients by ensuring safer and more effective treatments.
One research area Nagib said he chose to focus on was optimizing the development of Paxlovid, the first FDA-approved prescription drug used to treat COVID-19.
When Paxlovid first came out in 2021, Nagib said he wondered how Pfizer fused a five-member ring and a three-member ring.
In chemistry, molecules can have different shapes based on how their atoms are connected. A five-member ring is like a pentagon, where five atoms form a closed loop. On the other hand, a three-member ring is like a triangle, made of three atoms.
“There are no good ways to do it,” Nagib said. “You try [to] make it in one, two, maybe three steps. They had vendors making it in 15, 20 steps. And there was not enough supply [in the world] to make this one ingredient of a three-part molecule.”
Nagib said half of his team has been working to synthesize the five-member rings with a nitrogen atom for the last decade, while the other half has been working to synthesize the three-member rings for the last three years.
Nagib said he — along with postdoctoral student Pavitra Laohapaisan and fourth-year graduate student Ipshita Roy — published a solution for creating the building block, the crucial five-member ring with a nitrogen atom, Oct. 16. The trio hopes that pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer will use the solution, making Paxlovid more accessible to the public.
Growing up the eldest of four siblings, and having spent much of his childhood setting an example for them, Nagib said he always had a passion for teaching.
“When you teach someone and their eyes open up [with] the ‘Aha’ moment, it’s the same thing [as] when my graduate students get a big discovery,” Nagib said. “That’s the joy.”
After taking his first organic chemistry class during his freshman year at Boston College, Nagib said he discovered a career path in organic chemistry thanks to his professor, Scott Miller.
“Everybody seems to have had a good teacher who inspired them at one point in their life,” Nagib said.
After earning his Bachelor of Science from Boston College in 2006, Nagib said he went on to receive his Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton University in 2011.
Having built a solid foundation in research, paired with his passion for teaching, Nagib said he saw potential for collaboration and growth at Ohio State.
“[It] was my first time [in] Ohio, so I did not know what to expect,” Nagib said. “I was obviously very impressed [on] that first interview day. The people in Ohio had the sort of grit, resilience, I think, all the things that make someone successful in science.”
Claudia Turro, chair of Ohio State’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said she saw the same qualities in Nagib. So, she hired him, providing Nagib with the platform that led him to achieve his present-day success.
“The way we hire new faculty is, we look at their potential to be like this, to really succeed, and he has certainly done that, right?” Turro said. “We always gauge faculty when we’re hiring them, for their potential to have this kind of impact. And not everybody does it, but, you know, in his case, he certainly did.”
Turro said Nagib’s scientific contributions at Ohio State, including his recent honor, also have great significance beyond the university’s boundaries.
“It’s great that he’s being recognized at this level because he basically invented new reactions that were not possible before, and so these new reactions allow, especially for therapeutics, to make new drugs that were not possible before,” Turro said. “So, this is huge, not just for chemistry, but also for society, to be able to have new molecules to treat disease, right? So it’s a really huge thing.”
This article was updated Oct. 25 at 12:27 p.m. to accurately reflect the Blavatnik Awards disciplinary categories, Kamala Murthy’s title and the Blavatnik Awards funding and status as an awards program.
