GLP-1 Drugs Are Transforming Diabetes, Obesity And More. Could A Nobel Be Next?

By By Megan Molteni  and Elaine Chen 

Next week, 50 medical experts from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm will meet to award the 2023 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The vote takes place on Oct. 2, but betting-minded scientists are already beginning to make their picks for who might take home the gold.

Seasoned Nobel prognosticators will point out that the medicine prize often cycles between super-basic molecular biology and inventions that actually cure people. Last year’s award for paleogenomics falls more toward the former, suggesting an advance with a more clinical focus could well be in the Nobel Assembly’s sights this year.

There are many compelling candidates, including the mRNA technology that helped halt the Covid-19 pandemic. But the explosive impact of metabolism-correcting, weight-moderating drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro also has some prize forecasters wondering if perhaps the discoveries that have led up to these treatments might find their way to the Nobel spotlight.

Maybe that’s just recency bias talking. These drugs, based on the GLP-1 hormone, seem to be everywhere at the moment — helping people control their diabetes and lose weight, and offering hope that they might also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease or even, one day, treat drug and alcohol addiction.

Many researchers STAT has spoken to in recent months while covering this medical revolution have noted that it has Nobel promise, if not this year, then sometime soon.

Then the question obviously becomes, who gets it? These blockbuster drugs didn’t appear overnight. The journey from the discovery of the GLP-1 hormone to treatments for diabetes and then obesity was a long and stuttering one, spanning more than four decades and involving hundreds of researchers across academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

“Certainly this class of drugs, both what they’ve already done and their potential, is enormous and worthy of a consideration around these large prizes,” said Randy Seeley, director of the Michigan Nutrition Obesity Research Center, who has followed the development of these drugs and has consulted for companies making them. But “how you attribute credit is really complicated.”

Other prestigious awards have already gone to a trio of scientists involved in generating some of the earliest insights about the GLP-1 hormone. Historically, the Nobel Prize Assembly has also tended to lean toward honoring basic research. And, as critics have pointed out over the years, by elevating just one, two, or at most, three researchers, the Nobels distort the history of science “by personalizing discoveries that are truly made by groups of individuals.”

There was also a lot of luck along the way, like the finding that targeting GLP-1 receptors could lead to substantial weight loss. And there’s no way to assign credit for that. “We’re doing things with these drugs that don’t mimic the biology,” said Seeley. “So understanding the biology alone didn’t get us there, but it was absolutely necessary before we could move on to the next phase.”

Each new leap in understanding may not be prize-worthy in isolation, but with each one, the door cracked open wider, expanding the number of people who could benefit from GLP-1 and other gut-hormone-based treatments. And that, Nobel or not, is worth understanding.

It would be impossible to construct a comprehensive list of actors in the 40-year history that has led up to the drugs we have now. However after months of reporting and interviews with dozens of researchers, STAT has identified many of the scientists who were instrumental in creating this transformative family of treatments for diabetes, obesity, and a growing list of other modern ills.

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