09/19/2024 – 13:00
The new generation of obesity treatments, which have become very popular in just a few years, are not “miracle drugs” and “should never be taken for aesthetic reasons”, warns Svetlana Mojsov, one of the scientists who enabled their development.
Along with two other researchers, Joel Habener and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, Mojsov received the prestigious Lasker Award on Thursday (19), often considered a harbinger of a possible Nobel Prize.
The trio contributed to the revolution in the treatment of obesity, a chronic disease and a real public health crisis, contributing to the discovery and development of drugs that allow significant weight loss.
Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound: prescribed to combat obesity or type 2 diabetes (hyperglycemia often associated with being overweight), these treatments have become so popular that they are now used by some people to lose a few “extra” pounds.
“The big success is being able to treat obesity and that is what we should focus on,” insisted the 76-year-old scientist.
In an interview with AFP, this chemist and fellow award-winner Joel Habener highlighted the decades of research required for its development.
“When you are a researcher, you dream of discovering something that will help people,” he said, celebrating that the advances contribute to the understanding that “obesity is a metabolic disease and not a problem of willpower.”
– Occasional discovery –
The effectiveness of these new drugs is due to a discovery: they simulate a hormone secreted by the intestine, called GLP-1.
Habener, an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, was the first to detect its existence, initially in fish, in 1982.
Mojsov, in turn, identified the active sequence of GLP-1, demonstrating its presence in the intestine and synthesizing a pure form.
He then discovered, in collaboration with others, that this hormone stimulates the secretion of insulin by the pancreas, helping to reduce blood glucose levels.
Soon, he was “convinced” that “it would be a good treatment for diabetes”.
But at the time, no one suspected its usefulness against obesity. “We didn’t really have weight loss in mind” because obesity wasn’t a big problem, says Habener, 87.
Plus, in the 1980s, “there was no scientific evidence that hormones regulated weight,” adds Mojsov, an associate professor at Rockefeller University.
It was only by chance that, during large clinical trials, scientists noticed that patients were losing weight. Little by little, they understood that GLP-1 slows down stomach emptying, but also acts on the brain, influencing the feeling of satiety. A decisive discovery.
– Other benefits –
Pharmaceutical companies are quickly taking over.
At Novo Nordisk, researcher Lotte Bjerre Knudsen is trying to make GLP-1 last longer than a few minutes in the body with techniques that aim to make it last first a day and then a week.
The other laboratories continue on the same path.
The American company Eli Lilly has developed a molecule that combines GLP-1 with another gastrointestinal hormone that, according to Svetlana Mojsov, could limit side effects.
“We may come up with a new generation” that combines different hormones, says the award-winning scientist, adding that “Ozempic is not necessarily the final solution” but “has paved the way.”
One of the molecules has already been authorized for use against cardiovascular accidents and studies are being developed to treat sleep apnea, addictions, kidney and liver diseases or even neurodegenerative diseases (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s).
For Mojsov, GLP-1 paves the way for the idea that a drug is not reserved for a single disease.
“Until now, we were talking about one medicine for each disease. Today we see that GLP-1 brings a much wider range of health benefits,” he concludes.
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