OFF THE SCALES

On the race to mint a lucrative weight-loss drug.

Glucagon, a peptide hormone that plays a role in controlling blood sugar, was discovered more than a century ago. Half a century later, working in a laboratory at Rockefeller University, Yugoslavian immigrant Svetlana Mojsov wondered if it might be harnessed to treat diabetes. There were challenges, as Reuters correspondent Donnellan recounts: “She first needed to make it synthetically in a lab. Once she had created the hormone, she could then track down its origins in the body using antibodies, reveal its active form…and prove that it impacted blood sugar. None of this had been done before.” Numerous other scientists were working on related problems, including a ferociously talented team of researchers at Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, which purchased the patent rights to the resulting GLP-1 from one of Mojsov’s colleagues—after which, for years, Mojsov had to fight legally for her share of the patent royalties. She has since been recognized for her work, but the story points to a long-standing truth that women in science have to wage more than just intellectual battles. Meanwhile, the question of glucagon’s workings expanded to an even more lucrative realm: Since obesity is a known cause of type 2 diabetes, why not synthesize the hormone as a weight-loss drug? Thus unfolds the second part of Donnellan’s story, turning from scientific competition to the larger social implications: Better health might yield greater economic productivity, diets might improve (since those who take weight-loss drugs consume less sugar and fat), and health dollars can go to treating other maladies. “The potential ripple effects of this healthcare revolution are difficult to overstate,” Donnellan comments, and she makes this abundantly clear in her rich, even action-packed narrative of medical discovery.

A tangled plot stuffed with big money, towering egos, and innovative science, capably told and without an ounce of flab.