Five scientists who have revolutionized the treatment for obesity and diabetes were crowned yesterday with the “Princess of Asturias” Scientific and Technical Research Awards 2024. The jury recognized the unquestionable merit of: Daniel J. Druckerdoctor, (Canada); Jeffrey M. Friedmanmolecular biologist, (United States); Joel F. Habenerendocrinologist, (United States); Jens Juul Holst, chemist, (Denmark); and Svetlana Mojsov, chemistry, (Macedonia/United States). All considered world leaders in the field of endocrinology and to whom, in some way, we can attribute the “fatherhood” of one of the great successes of recent years in terms of treatments against highly prevalent diseases: the pill to treat endocrinology. diabetes and obesity –that is a saying, since many treatments are intravenous–.
Daniel J. Drucker, “Princess” Research Award: “Patients find the scarcity of medicines frustrating and the fact that those that exist are expensive”
The award jury – chaired by physicist Pedro Miguel Echenique – explains in its minutes that “the research of the award-winning scientists has established the endocrine bases of diabetes and obesity, pathologies that are a global public health problem without effective treatment until the date”. They add that Jeffrey M. Friedman has been a pioneer in establishing the genetic basis of the hormone that regulates appetite, known as leptin, in 1994. For his part, Daniel J. Drucker, Joel F. Habener, Jens Juul Holst and Svetlana Mojsov have studied the effect of certain hormones that regulate insulin secretion and glucose levels. Research that has led to the development, for the first time, of effective drugs.
Jens Juul Host, “Princess” Research Award: “I don’t see why overweight people shouldn’t be allowed to resort to drugs”
Drucker, Habener, Holst and Mojsov share the recognition of having initiated and developed this research since the seventies of the last century.. From their different laboratories, they studied the hormones that intervene in the process and regulate the digestive metabolism, such as somatostatin, which inhibits the production of glucagon and insulin, and variants of glucagon, called GLP-1 and GLP-2, and they verified that in This state of balance could be the effective therapeutic target against type 2 diabetes.
The evaluators of the candidacy highlight that in recent years there has been great progress in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. “Millions of people receive the medications that emerged from the scientific revolution initiated by the five winners. The best known is semaglutide –sold under the trade name Ozempic–, which mimics the activity of a hormone-like peptide, glucagon-1 (GLP-1), along with a healthy diet and exercise, improves blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. type 1 diabetes and reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. The magazine “Science” designated these drugs as the greatest scientific advance of 2023.
This year, 48 candidates from 17 nationalities opted for the Scientific and Technical Research award. The proposal of the five winners came from the hand of the winner “Princess” of Scientific and Technical Research in 2021Philip Felgner.
The jury was made up, in addition to Pedro Echenique, of Cristina Garmendia, Jesús del Álamo, Alberto Aparici, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Juan Ignacio Cirac, Avelino Corma, Elena García, Bernardo Hernández, Jerónimo López, Amador Menéndez, Ginés Morata, Peregrina Quintela , Inés Rodríguez, María Teresa Telleria and María Paz Zorzano.
Jeffrey Friedman yesterday confessed himself “very honored” to add his name to a long list of winners, many with “exceptional contributions”, and wanted to extend his gratitude to the Royal Family “for their efforts to celebrate our heritage through these awards common”.
Four recognized names and a woman who fought to be recognized
Daniel J. Drucker (Montreal, Canada, June 26, 1956) He graduated in Medicine from the University of Toronto in 1980. He completed his medical internship between 1980 and 1981 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and his residency at the University of Toronto, between 1980 and 1984. In 1984 he obtained a scholarship to work at the Massachusetts General Hospital and, in 1987, he joined Toronto General Hospital, where he worked until 2021. Since 2006 he has been a senior researcher at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital. He combines his research with teaching at the University of Toronto, where he has been a professor since 1987 and a professor since 1996. He is the author of some 430 scientific publications and 33 patents.
Jeffrey M. Friedman (Orlando, USA, July 20, 1954) He received his medical degree in 1977 from Albany Medical College, and his doctorate in 1986 from Rockefeller University.
His professional career has been linked to the Howard Hughes Institute of this university, first as an assistant researcher, then as an associate researcher and since 1988 as holder of the Marilyn M. Simpson chair. She has published 238 scientific articles, has received 59,201 citations, and has an h-index of 90. She is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. .
- Joel F. Habener (born United States June 29, 1937) He received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Redlands in 1960 and his Doctor of Medicine from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1965. He completed a residency as an intern at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. (1965-67) and at Massachusetts General Hospital. Since 1973 he has combined research, teaching and clinical activity as professor of Medicine at Harvard University and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2006 he was named professor emeritus and remains active.
- Jens Juul Holst (Copenhagen, Denmark, August 1, 1945) He graduated in 1970 and received his doctorate in 1978 in Medical Sciences from the University of Copenhagen. He combined his studies with clinical practices and research at the Bispebjerg Hospital and later, as a teacher and scientist at the Department of Medical Physiology at the University of Copenhagen, from 1977 to the present. In 2010 he was appointed scientific director of the Center for Basic Metabolic Research at Novo Nordisk Laboratories, based at the University of Copenhagen. He is co-founder of the companies Antag Therapeutics and Bainan Biotech.
- Svetlana Mojsov (Skopje, North Macedonia, December 8, 1947) studied physics-chemistry in Belgrade and graduated in 1972 from Rockefeller University (USA). There he worked with the 1984 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Robert Merrifield and specialized in peptide synthesis. He later moved to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he identified the GLP-1 peptide, synthesized it and studied its function, in addition to developing antibodies against some of its sequences. In the nineties he returned to Rockefeller University. Despite his role in the discovery and study of GLP-1, his name was not recognized until he initiated a lawsuit demanding that articles that appeared in The New York Times, Nature and Cell be corrected. Science magazine published an extensive article in September 2023 explaining and acknowledging his contribution.
Scientific and Technical Research
This award is intended to recognize the “work of cultivating and perfecting research, discovery and/or invention in astronomy and astrophysics, medical sciences, cTechnological sciences, Earth and space sciencesthe life sciences, physics, mathematics and chemistry, as well as the disciplines corresponding to each of these fields and the techniques related to them.
Last year, American biologists were honored with this award. Jeffrey Gordon and Peter Greenberg along with biochemistry Bonnie L. Bassler for his achievements in the search for new effective treatments against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
In previous editions it was also obtained by artificial intelligence experts Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio and Demis Hassabis (2022), biochemists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna; chemists Avelino Corma, Mark E. Davis and Galen D. Stucky; the physicists Peter Higgs and François Englert, and the neurologists Joseph Altman, Arturo Álvarez-Buylla and Giacomo Rizzolatti.
The Scientific and Technical Research award is the seventh of the eight awards announced annually by the Princess of Asturias Foundation to fail, so in this XLIV edition only the Concordia award remains to be announced, on June 12.
The act of delivery of the Princess of Asturias Awards will be held, as is traditionalin the month of October in a solemn ceremony presided over by the kings at the Campoamor Theater in Oviedo, accompanied by Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía.
Each Princess of Asturias Award is endowed with a reproduction of a sculpture by Joan Miró – the representative symbol of the award -, an accrediting diploma, a badge and the cash amount of fifty thousand euros.