Lasker Award goes to three scientists who pioneered research behind GLP-1 drugs

Three scientists whose work paved the way to the multibillion-dollar obesity drug boom have won the Lasker Award for “the discovery and development of GLP-1-based drugs that have revolutionized the treatment of obesity,” the Lasker Foundation announced Thursday.

Joel Habener

Joel Habener from Massachusetts General Hospital and Svetlana Mojsov from The Rockefeller University were honored for unraveling the molecular mysteries of the natural version of GLP-1 made by the body. And Lotte Bjerre Knudsen from Novo Nordisk was honored for figuring out how to turn the short-lived natural molecule into a longer-lasting drug.

The trio will split the $250,000 that comes with the 2024 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, which is sometimes viewed as a stepping stone to a Nobel Prize. But while the Nobel committee at times seems to pride itself on honoring esoteric discoveries that, while foundational to science, are rarely known to the general public, several recent Lasker Awards have gone to researchers whose fields of work are currently in the limelight.

For example, in 2021, the Lasker Foundation honored Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their foundational work on mRNA vaccines that paved the way to Covid-19 shots. And last year the Foundation awarded Google scientists Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their creation of AlphaFold, the AI-based software for predicting protein structures that quickly swept through biotech labs.

Blockbuster science, with decades of history

Although 2024 might be remembered as the year GLP-1 drugs exploded on the market, the science behind them dates back more than four decades to the early days of genetic engineering, when scientists were just learning how to clone and manipulate genes for the first time.

Habener, while studying the biology of diabetes, discovered what would later be called GLP-1 by looking at glucagon genes from anglerfish. The animal was chosen for its unusual organ that makes copious quantities of the blood sugar-stimulating hormone, and because it skirted early rules restricting work on human genes.

Svetlana Mojsov

In 1982, Habener found that the fish genes contained code not only for glucagon, but a similar gene that looked like glucagon but with six extra amino acids on one end. A year later, glucagon biochemist Mojsov moved from New York to Boston and helped disentangle how that molecular endcap on GLP-1 gets cleaved to release an active molecule.

Habener, Mojsov, and other collaborators in Boston soon went on to show that the cleaved hormone potently stimulates insulin secretion and lowers blood glucose levels. By the early 90s, it was clear that an artificial version of GLP-1 could become the basis of a powerful diabetes drug, and companies including Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk soon began working on the idea.

Of course, making a good drug often turns out to be a lot harder than expected. Simply injecting synthetic versions of GLP-1 into the blood didn’t work well because much of the molecule got chewed up by an enzyme called DPP-4, and the rest got sucked out of circulation by the kidneys.

Lotte Bjerre Knudsen

But Knudsen, a Danish scientist in charge of GLP-1 work at Novo Nordisk, figured out a way around that problem. By attaching fatty acids to the drug, she helped it hitch a ride on a common blood protein called albumin, keeping it moving throughout the body longer.

The work led to Novo’s drug liraglutide, and subsequent chemical modifications helmed by other scientists at the company led to the successor semaglutide, now sold as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. The franchise is now a blockbuster, and Wall Street analysts have projected that the category could be one of the biggest in industry history.