Her work paved the way for blockbuster obesity drugs. Now, she’s fighting for recognition - Science.org   

When Svetlana Mojsov heard the spring 2021 announcement, she was startled. The Canada Gairdner International Award, a prestigious biomedical research prize, would be bestowed on three scientists for work underpinning the diabetes and obesity drugs that have exploded in popularity in recent years. “I was really upset,” recalls Mojsov, a chemist at Rockefeller University.

The Gairdner award marked the third time in 4 years that the same trio of scientists—Joel Habener at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Daniel Drucker at the University of Toronto, and Jens Juul Holst at the University of Copenhagen—were honored for work that began in the 1970s and ’80s on glucagon-like peptides. That research identified glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) as a hormone churned out by gut tissue that triggers insulin release in the pancreas. Drugs mimicking GLP-1, called GLP-1 agonists, would later become blockbusters, raking in billions of dollars and transforming treatment of diabetes and obesity. They are the first that appear to safely and consistently cause marked weight loss, and last month they were reported to stave off heart disease associated with obesity. Millions of people take them, and speculation is stirring about an eventual Nobel Prize.

But this upbeat narrative of scientific discovery is missing an important piece: Mojsov herself. She, too, was at MGH in the 1980s and published early key papers on GLP-1. She later fought, successfully, to be added to crucial patents that initially omitted her as a co-inventor.

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