Scientists behind Ozempic and Wegovy win $3-million Breakthrough Prize

Five scientists who pioneered GLP-1-based drugs Ozempic and Wegovy receive $3 million Breakthrough Prize for life-changing contributions to diabetes and obesity treatment

A group of five scientists who played key roles in the development of the widely successful weight-loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy have been awarded a $3-million Breakthrough Prize — one of the most prestigious and financially rewarding honours in science, according to a report by magazine Scientific American.

 

Originally designed to manage diabetes, Ozempic and Wegovy have become prominent treatments for obesity due to their ability to mimic glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), a hormone that regulates blood sugar and suppresses appetite. Ziyad Al-Aly, a physician-scientist at the Veterans Affairs St Louis Health Care System, hailed these medications for transforming lives, citing his recent large-scale study involving nearly two million individuals, the report said.

 

 

The life sciences award is shared among Daniel Drucker of the University of Toronto, Joel Habener of Harvard Medical School, Jens Juul Holst from the University of Copenhagen, and Svetlana Mojsov of The Rockefeller University, who together identified and studied GLP-1. They are joined by Lotte Bjerre Knudsen from Novo Nordisk in Denmark, who was pivotal in drug development, enhancing the compound’s stability and effectiveness.

 

From discovery to breakthrough

 

The journey began in the 1990s when researchers observed GLP-1’s effects on weight loss in animals. Knudsen later modified the compound by attaching fatty acid chains, allowing the drug to remain longer in the bloodstream after injection. “It’s a tremendous honour to receive this prestigious award,” Drucker said.

 

Awarded to over 13,000 researchers

 

In an unusual move, the Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics was awarded collectively to over 13,508 researchers across four teams at CERN, who have been working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Their efforts over the last decade have focused on refining the standard model of particle physics through precise measurements.

 

Patricia McBride, a spokesperson for the CMS collaboration, said the prize acknowledges the collaborative effort and confirmed that the funds will help support student researchers at CERN.

 

Brian Rebel, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, emphasised that the LHC’s achievements go far beyond the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, citing advances in particle identification and probing the early universe’s quark–gluon plasma, the news report said.

 

Honouring a physics pioneer

 

Gerard ’t Hooft of Utrecht University received a separate Breakthrough Prize in physics for his theoretical contributions to the standard model. A Nobel laureate in 1999, ’t Hooft was recognised for his work on both weak and strong nuclear forces.

 

Two more life sciences prizes were awarded for medical research. Stephen Hauser and Alberto Ascherio were honoured for advancing understanding of multiple sclerosis (MS). Hauser’s findings in the 1990s suggested that B cells, not T cells, play a central role in MS — a theory initially met with resistance. Ascherio’s 2022 research definitively linked MS risk to Epstein–Barr virus infection.

 

Meanwhile, David Liu of the Broad Institute was awarded for pioneering gene-editing tools using CRISPR. His innovations are now being tested in clinical trials for conditions such as leukemia and sickle-cell disease.

 

Launched in 2012, the Breakthrough Prizes are funded by Yuri Milner and other tech figures, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.