Weight-loss-drug pioneer: this biochemist finally gained recognition for her work
Svetlana Mojsov led early studies of GLP-1, the hormone behind Wegovy, Ozempic and other blockbusters
This story is part of Nature’s 10, an annual list compiled by Nature’s editors exploring key developments in science and the individuals who contributed to them.
A new class of weight-loss drugs has swept into clinics and made medicines such as Ozempic and Wegovy household names. They have generated billions of dollars in profit for the pharmaceutical industry and brought scientific acclaim for the researchers credited with discovering the hormone behind them: an appetite suppressant called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1).
But there is one early pioneer who has not received due acknowledgement: Svetlana Mojsov. A biochemist now at The Rockefeller University in New York City, Mojsov had a pivotal role in identifying and characterizing the active form of GLP-1. Yet her efforts went unrecognized in many accounts of the hormone’s discovery, and she has not shared the scientific prizes bestowed for that feat.
This year, Mojsov fought the entrenched narratives — and began to win wider recognition for her contributions to the field. “All I’m trying to do is put the scientific record straight,” she says.
A Yugoslavian-born scientist now in her mid-seventies, Mojsov was a member of the endocrine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston in the 1980s, where she also directed a facility that made synthetic proteins for use in the unit and beyond. During this time, she conducted a series of landmark studies and supplied others with the research tools needed to make their own advances.
Her own work with GLP-1 started when she predicted that a particular version of the hormone should exist in mammalian gut tissue. Mojsov then experimentally confirmed that prediction (S. Mojsov et al. J. Biol. Chem. 261, 11880–11889; 1986). She next showed that this biologically active form of GLP-1 could trigger insulin release from the pancreas of a rat (S. Mojsov et al. J. Clin. Invest. 79, 616–619; 1987).
Peptides and antibodies created by Mojsov were also instrumental to several other GLP-1 experiments performed in cell lines at the time, and allowed clinicians to demonstrate that GLP-1 could lower blood glucose in an early human trial.
This research set the stage for drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, both of which feature a GLP-1 analogue called semaglutide. It incorporates only minor modifications from the peptide outlined in Mojsov’s original paper; the changes improve stability and ensure longer-lasting effects. Global sales of semaglutide are now worth more than US$1 billion a month, and this class of drugs is forecast to become one of the best-selling medicines of all time.
Yet, Mojsov’s part in the discovery was long overlooked.
She had to endure a protracted legal battle to have her name added to foundational patents as a co-inventor, a move that earned Mojsov royalties for a year or two connected to sales of a first-generation GLP-1 drug. But, with her patents long expired, she has no financial stake in the semaglutide windfall.
The lack of recognition started to grate on Mojsov. History was being “manipulated”, she says. For example, she felt that commentaries published to coincide with prizes exaggerated some of the winners’ contributions at her expense.
“That was a wake-up call for me,” Mojsov says. She began to speak out.
At her urging, journals such as Cell and Nature have revised narratives of GLP-1’s discovery to better reflect Mojsov’s involvement at MGH — one of the two places, along with the University of Copenhagen, where researchers independently homed in on and characterized the active form of the hormone. In September 2023, the journal Science and the news outlet STAT published two lengthy profiles that, some 40 years after she began working on GLP-1, finally told her side of the story.
E-mails of support have since poured in — from fellow scientists, especially women, who felt that their own work had been sidelined, and from others frustrated by the hierarchies of biomedical research.
The attention focused on Mojsov has also begun to change the minds of some who were involved in early GLP-1 research.
“She’s got a point,” says Joel Habener, a molecular endocrinologist at MGH. Habener collaborated with Mojsov, appearing as the senior author on all her seminal papers, but was the sole patent holder before Mojsov had the patents corrected. “She absolutely deserves to be recognized,” he says.
In past accounts of the discovery, Mojsov was mischaracterized as a scientist in Habener’s group, rather than an independent investigator whose efforts helped to propel the MGH endeavour. “Her contributions were essential,” says Richard Goodman, a molecular neurobiologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland who, as a postdoc of Habener’s, helped to decode the gene behind a precursor to GLP-1. “Would it have moved forward without Svetlana? No.”
Prizes — and the prestige they bring — could follow, but that is not the top priority for Mojsov, who continues to study GLP-1 and related proteins in her lab.
“I am just happy that my work is recognized,” she says. “Everything else is secondary.”
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03927-1
This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:Elie Dolgin
