Harvard Medical School researcher Joel Habener has won the 2024 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his discovery of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a molecule that has become the basis for therapies which have transformed the treatment of obesity.
Lasker awards, sometimes called “America’s Nobels,” are among the world’s most prestigious biomedical and clinical research awards.
Habener, professor of medicine at HMS and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital, shares the prize with biochemist Svetlana Mojsov, of Rockefeller University, and with Danish scientist Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, of Novo Nordisk.
The understanding of the complex hormonal interplay underlying the regulation of blood sugar stems from the work of many scientists. However, the independent discoveries made by Habener, Mojsov, and Knudsen converged to enable the design of disease-altering therapies for type 2 diabetes, which affects nearly 400 million people worldwide, and obesity, estimated to affect about one billion globally.
In the 1970s, Habener was captivated by the role of the hormone glucagon in blood sugar regulation and its interactions with other hormones involved in glucose production and breakdown. When Habener cloned the gene for glucagon, he discovered that it encodes not only glucagon but another molecule, GLP-1. Habener further defined the biology of the molecule and its functions. Subsequent work by Habener and others demonstrated that GLP-1 is released in the blood from gut cells in response to food intake where it then acts to enhance the release of insulin from the beta cells of the pancreas. These findings suggested that augmenting the activity of GLP-1 could be an important therapeutic target.
Independently, Mojsov developed innovative research methods and reagents that provided scientists with the means to draw unambiguous conclusions about essential aspects of GLP-1 biology. Crucially, she identified and purified the physiologically active form of GLP-1.
In the 1990s, Knudsen, the head of GLP-1 therapeutics at Novo Nordisk, and her team transformed these insights into treatments to fight diabetes and obesity. Notably, they modified the drugs in a way that allowed them to linger in the body for longer, extending their therapeutic effects from a few hours to a week.
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“The work of Joel Habener and his award co-recipients is an elegant demonstration of the power of basic science. It shows how insights made in the laboratory and observations at the patient bedside can feed and amplify each other, leading to transformative therapies,” said George Q. Daley, dean of HMS. “The work of these researchers has reshaped the future for millions with obesity and type 2 diabetes.”
Through their discoveries and dedicated efforts, Habener, Mojsov, and Knudsen have introduced a new era of weight management, dramatically improving the health and well-being of hundreds of millions, the foundation said in its award citation.
This work has opened up a burgeoning field of research to better define the mechanisms behind additional health benefits that have begun to emerge from GLP-1 therapy, such as improvement in heart function, chronic kidney disorders, fatty liver disease, and more.
Adapted from a Lasker Foundation news release.
