Five scientists who contributed to the development of diabetes and obesity treatments Ozempic and Wegovy have been selected as this year's Breakthrough Prize winners.
The Breakthrough Foundation announced on the 5th (local time) that five individuals, including Professor Daniel Drucker of the University of Toronto, Professor Joel Habener of Harvard Medical School, Professor Jens Juul Holst of the University of Copenhagen, Professor Svetlana Mojsov of Rockefeller University, and advisor Lotte Bjerre Knudsen of Novo Nordisk in Denmark, were selected as this year's winners in the life sciences institutional sector for their scientific achievements in obesity treatments.
The Breakthrough Prize is an award for basic sciences established in 2012 by Yuri Milner, a Russian venture investor, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Since 2013, it has been awarded to researchers who have made outstanding achievements in fundamental physics, life sciences, and mathematics. The prize is $3 million, which is more than double that of the Nobel Prize (43.845 billion won). The prize is established by Silicon Valley tycoons, and the award ceremony sees participation not only from scientists but also from entrepreneurs and Hollywood actors, hence it is referred to as the 'Nobel Prize of Silicon Valley' and the 'Oscar of the scientific world.'
This year's life sciences institutional sector award went to three groups. First, the scientists who discovered glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and those who led the development of drugs based on this discovery received the awards. GLP-1 is a hormone secreted in the small intestine when food is consumed, promoting insulin secretion to lower blood sugar while simultaneously inhibiting glucagon secretion that raises blood sugar.
In the 1990s, Professor Drucker discovered that GLP-1 reduces appetite and causes weight loss in animals. Advisor Knudsen developed a method to stabilize the structure by adding fatty acid chains to GLP-1, preventing it from breaking down quickly after injection.
Novo Nordisk first developed Ozempic as a GLP-1 analog for diabetes treatment and later evolved it into the obesity drug Wegovy after the weight loss effect was confirmed. Wegovy slows down digestion, providing feelings of fullness for longer with smaller meals. As Wegovy sparked a craze in the U.S. market, several pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, entered the development of GLP-1-based obesity drugs.
Professor Drucker, who laid the groundwork for GLP-1 development, noted, "It is a great honor to receive such a prestigious award, but the greatest satisfaction comes when I meet individuals who say, 'I lost 18 kg and regained my health' in my office."
Stephen Hauser, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and Alberto Ascherio from Harvard Chan School of Public Health were honored for their groundbreaking changes in the understanding and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS).
Multiple sclerosis occurs when the immune cells of the body attack myelin, which is the protective sheath that wraps around the spinal cord or nerve cells, instead of external intruders. When myelin is destroyed, nerve signals cannot be transmitted properly, causing the entire body to stiffen and impairing vision.
Professor Hauser revealed that B-cells, a type of immune cell, are a major cause of nerve cell damage, playing a significant role in the development and testing of treatments that destroy B-cells. Professor Ascherio discovered the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, which is a crucial condition for the onset of multiple sclerosis. He found that being infected with EBV increases the risk of developing multiple sclerosis by 32 times. The Breakthrough Foundation stated that this research opens possibilities for developing an EBV vaccine that can effectively treat and prevent multiple sclerosis with antiviral drugs.
David Liu, a professor of chemistry at Harvard University, was awarded for developing two gene-editing technologies. In 2016, Liu's research team developed a base-editing technology that corrects 'spelling errors' in mutations that cause genetic diseases, accounting for about 30% of them. Gene scissors are enzyme complexes that can cut specific parts of DNA, and Liu developed gene scissors that edit a single base that makes up DNA.
The widely used CRISPR-Cas9 gene scissors cut both strands of DNA, sometimes causing errors where the wrong parts are added or deleted. In 2019, Professor Liu developed a prime editing method to prevent this. This method cuts only one strand of DNA and inserts the desired base sequence, eliminating the possibility of errors that occur with traditional gene scissors. Scientists say that while CRISPR-Cas9 is like a pencil for gene scissors, prime editing is akin to a word processor.
This year, the physics institutional sector award was unusually shared among a total of 13,508 individuals. All participants were involved in four joint studies conducted at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). They were recognized for their contributions in verifying the standard model of particle physics through repeated precise experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) over the past decade.
Patricia McBride, a spokesperson for CERN, noted, "Such progress would have been impossible without the efforts of all researchers, making it even more honorable to award the scientists who participated in the collaborative research." He added that the prize money is intended to support visits to CERN for students worldwide.
The mathematics institutional sector award went to Dennis Gaitsgory of Harvard University for playing a central role in proving the geometric Langlands conjecture.
Similar to physics' "grand unification theory" that seeks to describe the forces of nature — gravity, electromagnetism, weak force, and strong force — the Langlands program is an extensive mathematical research program that encompasses various fields of mathematics, including algebraic geometry, harmonic analysis, and number theory.
This program is named after Professor Robert Langlands, a Canadian mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, who proposed a precise connection between seemingly disparate mathematical concepts in 1967. Professor Gaitsgory claimed to have proven one geometric conjecture that underpins the Langlands program last year.
The Breakthrough Foundation stated that the total prize money for this year's Breakthrough Prize winners amounts to $18.75 million (about 27.4 billion won), and that the amount awarded over the past 14 years has exceeded $326 million (about 476.4 billion won).
References
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation (2025), https://breakthroughprize.org/News/91