The rockefeller university

Svetlana Mojsov

Research Associate Professor Svetlana Mojsov is a recipient of this year’s Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for her discovery of the peptide hormone GLP-1 and its role in inducing pancreatic insulin secretion in response to a meal, research that led to a new class of safe and highly effective drugs for type 2 diabetes as well as the treatment of obesity and its co-morbidities. Mojsov receives the prize along with Daniel J. Drucker of the University of Toronto; Joel Habener of Harvard University; Jens Juul Holst of the University of Copenhagen; and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen of Novo Nordisk.

Mojsov’s critical role in the discovery can be traced back decades to her Ph.D. and postdoctoral work in solid phase peptide synthesis in Bruce Merrifield’s Rockefeller lab, ultimately achieving the complete synthesis of glucagon, a peptide hormone that increases glucose release from the liver, protecting against low blood glucose.

As an independent investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1980s, Mojsov’s expertise in the chemical synthesis of peptides led to her discovery of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), a peptide of unknown function. Collaborating with Joel Habener, an endocrinologist at MGH, she showed that GLP-1 is a hormone released by the gut in response to a meal, producing glucose-dependent insulin secretion by the pancreas.

The development of this peptide into a medicine would require increasing the stability of the peptide in the blood from a few minutes to days to weeks. In a 20-year development program, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen succeeded in developing a modified peptide that ultimately could be administered weekly, enabling sustained very high levels of the product, semaglutide.

This GLP-1 receptor agonist and its successors promise to be one of the most consequential public health successes in history. They produce dramatic reductions in body weight in obese individuals and also reduce the incidence of obesity’s co-morbidities including heart attack, kidney failure, liver disease, and obesity-related cancers. Early clinical studies suggest a role in treating or preventing Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and addiction disorders.

Mojsov has received numerous high-profile awards over the past few years, including the Lasker Award, the Tang Prize, the Warren Triennial Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award, the Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the 2024 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize. The Breakthrough Prize carries the highest monetary award of any prize in the life sciences — $3 million — and is being presented today at an award ceremony in Los Angeles.