Sugar on the Brain | Carolyn Bertozzi

Today on the show, we bring you a conversation with Carolyn Bertozzi, the Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is a Nobel Laureate, a MacArthur Fellow, and an all around cool person – although it didn't come up in the conversation, she used to play in a band with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello.Although Bertozzi wouldn’t call herself a neuroscientist — she’s a chemist at heart – her work is having a big impact on neuroscience. Today, she focuses on the sugar molecules that stud the outer surfaces of our cells. It turns out that these molecules are incredibly important for how cells communicate with each other. But understanding these molecules is so complex and challenging that Bertozzi had to invent a new branch of chemistry in order to study them. In this episode, we'll hear how this research is opening doors not only within neuroscience but across biology and drug development as well.Learn moreThe Bertozzi Lab‘To advance science, I think it’s important to blur the boundaries between the disciplines’ (Stanford Report, 2026)Changes in brain’s ‘sugar shield’ could be key to understanding effects of aging (Stanford Report, 2025)Life is sweet (Stanford Magazine, 2022)Stanford’s Carolyn Bertozzi wins Nobel in chemistry (Stanford Report, 2022)Interview with Carolyn Bertozzi (Nobelprize.org, 2022)Aging brains pile up damaged proteins (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2025)Nobel Prize: How click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry are transforming the pharmaceutical and material industries (The Conversation, 2022)Glycocalyx dysregulation impairs blood-brain barrier in ageing and disease (Nature, 2025)Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected] more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.