Five scientists who have revolutionized the treatment of obesity have won this Wednesday the Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research 2024. The decades-long research of the Canadian Daniel J. Drucker, the Dane Jens Juul Holst and the Americans Jeffrey M. Friedman, Joel F. Habener and Svetlana Mojsov have developed several drugs to combat diabetes and obesity, such as Ozempic, an injectable drug whose sales are generating billions of euros each year.
The award has recognized an injustice. three scientists they had hoarded The winners so far: Joel Habener, Massachusetts General Hospital; Daniel Drucker, from the University of Toronto; and Jens Juul Holst, from the University of Copenhagen, who in research begun half a century ago identified an intestinal hormone, glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), which stimulates the pancreas to release more insulin when the sugar level in blood is elevated. American biochemistry Svetlana Mojsov, born 77 years ago in Skopje (in the former Yugoslavia, today North Macedonia), also played an essential role in those early studies, when she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital. The fifth winner is the doctor Jeffrey M. Friedman, born in Orlando (United States) 69 years ago, who in 1994 discovered the hormone leptin, which regulates appetite.
Millions of people receive the medicines that emerged from the scientific revolution initiated by the five winners. The best known is semaglutide, a drug from the Danish company Novo Nordisk, sold under the trade name Ozempic, which mimics the activity of GLP-1 and, together with a healthy diet and exercise, improves blood sugar levels in people with type 1 diabetes and reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company also offers best-selling GLP-1 agonist drugs: dulaglutide (Trulicity) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro).
Each Princess of Asturias Award is endowed with 50,000 euros and a sculpture by Joan Miró. Deliberations in the scientific category began this Tuesday in Oviedo, with a jury of 17 members chaired by the physicist Pedro Miguel Echenique, which included the biologist Cristina Garmendia, the mathematician Peregrina Quintela, the geneticist Ginés Morata and the paleoanthropologist Juan Luis Arsuaga.
Echenique, president of the Donostia International Physics Center, announced this Wednesday that the verdict was unanimous. “This research has led to the development of treatments that are now available and that are improving the quality of life of hundreds of millions of people around the world,” Echenique proclaimed, reading the jury report. “These works are having an enormous clinical and social impact, since they have allowed for the first time the development of effective drugs to combat diabetes and obesity. In addition, they allow us to mitigate associated pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases,” he celebrated. This year, 48 candidates from 17 countries aspired to the award.
The scientific award is the seventh of the eight international awards that the Princess of Asturias Foundation will announce this year. Singer Joan Manuel Serrat won in the Arts category on April 24. The Iranian cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, also a film director and painter, has received the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. In Sports, the winner was Carolina Marín, three-time badminton world champion. In Social Sciences, the jury has recognized the career of the Canadian essayist Michael Ignatieff. The Romanian poet Ana Blandiana won the Literature award on May 23 and, last week, the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. On June 12, the verdict in the Concordia category will be announced.
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