Frontiers of Knowledge Award to the ‘parents’ of Ozempic, the miracle for losing weight

Daniel Joshua Drucker (Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada), Joel Habener (Harvard University, USA), Jens Juul Holst (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and Svetlana Mojsov (Rockefeller University, New York, USA) were the four researchers awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine, in its 17th edition, for achieving the fundamental biological discoveries which have made possible the development of a new generation of effective drugs against diabetes and obesity, among which is the popular Ozempic.

The joint work of the four winners has revealed the biological function of the hormone known as GLP-1, produced in the small intestine after ingestion of food, which has a fundamental role in both maintaining glucose levels and regulating of the sensation of appetite. «These findings», as highlighted by the jury report, «have been used to develop new therapies for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and the obesity«.

«The discoveries of the four winners have laid the biological foundations of a true pharmacological revolution. His work provided the main milestones that have guided the development of ua new generation of effective medicines both to treat diabetics and to significantly reduce the weight of people who suffer from obesity and combat the cardiovascular problems associated with this disease,” says Dario Alessi, director of the Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitination Unit-MRC at the University of Dundee (United Kingdom) and member of the jury.

Within the field of research on the biological keys to obesity, the findings of the four winners are complemented by the discoveries of Douglas Coleman and Jeffrey Friedman on the role of another hormone, leptinin the regulation of appetite and body weight, which were already recognized in 2013 by the Frontiers of Knowledge in Biomedicine Award in its fifth edition.

In addition, treatments based on the GLP-1 hormone have also shown great potential to combat neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, as well as addiction disorders, the effectiveness of which is currently being investigated.