Three people have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing "click" and "bioorthogonal" chemistries. The award-giving body says their works are now contributing to a number of fields, including targeted cancer treatment.

Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless are being praised for creating a way to "snap molecules together." That allows researchers to efficiently create new desired compounds. The prize committee says scientists worldwide are now investigating how these reactions can be used to diagnose and treat cancer.

It also says Carolyn Bertozzi took click chemistry further and started using it in living organisms. She is the other award winner. Bertozzi says her chemistry work allows other scientists to discover new kinds of biomolecules.

In a telephone interview after the announcement, she said, "The other important area of impact is in medicine and in particular for drug delivery, which is doing chemistry inside human patients to make sure that drugs go to the right place and stay away from the wrong place."

Sharpless is the fifth person to receive the Nobel Prize twice. He first won it in 2001.