Latest news with #DanielDrucker
Toronto Star
01-05-2025
- Health
- Toronto Star
Beyond Ozempic: Why metabolic health management needs to be about more than just weight
This spring, Toronto endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Drucker was awarded the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences — the 'Oscars of science' — for a discovery he made nearly four decades ago. While working in a Boston lab in the 1980s, Drucker helped unravel the therapeutic potential of GLP-1, a gut hormone involved in blood sugar regulation. Ten years later, he built on that research by demonstrating how this naturally occurring peptide could also suppress appetite, laying the groundwork for a class of drugs that are now reshaping weight management and obesity treatment. Originally developed to treat Type 2 diabetes, GLP-1 receptor agonists or GLP-1 RAs — better known by such brand names as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro — have become widely known for their use in weight loss. In 2023 alone, 7.1 million prescriptions were dispensed in Canada. However, while GLP-1 RAs are a powerful tool, they're not meant to be taken in isolation. In 2020, Obesity Canada and the Canadian Association of Bariatric Physicians and Surgeons developed a set of patient-centred, experience-based best practices designed to guide health-care providers in delivering obesity care. These guidelines emphasize that effective obesity treatment should include medical nutrition therapy (essentially, a personalized dietary plan created by a registered dietitian), physical activity, psychological interventions and other behavioural adaptations. Yet the reality of obesity care, and health care in general, presents challenges that leave many patients without adequate support.
CBC
07-04-2025
- Health
- CBC
Canadian scientist wins Breakthrough Prize for discovery of hormone used in Ozempic, Mounjaro
A Canadian researcher has won a 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for discovering the GLP-1 hormone used in diabetes and obesity medications — including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro — that have changed the lives of millions of people around the world. Dr. Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist and a clinician-scientist at the University of Toronto and the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, shares the $3 million US prize with four colleagues from the United States and Denmark. They were all involved in the development of the now-famous drugs manufactured by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. Drucker and three co-winners made discoveries about glucagon-like peptide-1 in their labs. The other recipient of the award, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, who works for Novo Nordisk, led the way in developing it into medications. The Breakthrough Prizes, often referred to as the "Oscars of Science," were handed out Saturday in Los Angeles for categories including fundamental physics and mathematics, in addition to life sciences. The Breakthrough Foundation says the prizes were created to "celebrate the wonders of our scientific age." Another Canadian, Maaike van Kooten of National Research Council Canada, shared a $100,000 US prize called New Horizons in Physics with two international colleagues for work in optics to view exoplanets. In an interview in the week prior to the event, Drucker said the prize is meaningful because it's awarded by other scientists and "gets a lot of attention in the scientific community." "We have students and trainees and awards like this tell them that the world is watching and thinks the work is meritorious. And I think that's just great for morale and for young people," he said. Drucker began his journey studying genetic sequencing of glucagon-like peptides at a lab in Boston in the 1980s, then returned to Canada and continued his work at the University of Toronto. He spoke with The Canadian Press about those early days, what he thinks about how the resulting medications have changed the world's view of obesity and what other health issues GLP-1 might address in the future. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. When you started at that lab in Boston, why were you studying this particular hormone? "There were probably about a dozen projects in the lab at that time. So some people were working on pituitary hormones. Some people were on basic cell biology projects. Other people were working on different genes and glucagon was one of the projects in the lab.... It just so happened when I got there, they said, 'OK Drucker, you work on the glucagon gene.' [It] could have been another gene [and] you never would have heard from me again. Were there any key moments where you thought, 'Wow, this is a big deal?' "I don't think there was any one 'Eureka!' moment, but I will say the potential importance dawned on me when I walked into the lab one day and my notebooks were gone. And I said, 'Oh my gosh, someone broke into the lab and stole my notebooks.' And then it turned out no — my supervisor [and a fellow prize winner], Joel Habener, took my notebooks because he was excited enough about the results to file a patent." When did you come to the University of Toronto? "I came back in 1987.... In 1996, when we and others discovered that GLP-1 inhibits food intake, that was in my lab in Toronto, and we've done experiments on heart disease and inflammation and kidney disease and liver disease. So I literally have been working on this for 40 years." When did Novo Nordisk (manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy) become involved? "I think the big companies, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, and even other companies were trying from the beginning to develop medicines based on GLP-1. But we learned through some painful lessons that if you give too much GLP-1 too quickly, people throw up. It's still a side effect today, right? Some people just don't feel well and they have some nausea and vomiting. And so it took the pharmaceutical industry quite a while to figure out how to make GLP-1 last longer so it's not broken down, how to give small amounts to start off with, how to slowly build up the dose, et cetera. And that took years to do." What are you working on now and what are some other applications for GLP-1 drugs? "If we just look in the last couple of years, beyond lowering blood sugar and beyond reducing body weight, we have seen that these medicines reduce the rates of heart attacks and strokes and reduce the rates of diabetic kidney disease and are helpful for people with obstructive sleep apnea and reduce disability in people with arthritis and prevent the development of severe metabolic liver disease. And there are trials underway in Parkinson's disease, in Alzheimer's disease, in substance use disorders. "So I kind of look at this and I go, 'Wow, how does that happen? What are the things that GLP-1 is doing in the brain or in the blood vessels or in the kidney to improve the health of these organs?' So we're really focused on this aspect of GLP-1, including how GLP-1 reduces inflammation, which we think is a major part of the benefits that GLP-1 brings to the table." Are cardiovascular benefits because GLP-1 medication reduces weight or manages diabetes and that improves cardiovascular health? "What we're starting to see is that in many of the trials, the benefits don't strictly correlate with weight loss or blood sugar control. So there's no question [that] getting your blood sugar normal if you have Type 2 diabetes, reducing your body weight if it's too high, that's helpful. "But when we actually look at the trials and we see who has the benefit and who doesn't, there's not a perfect correlation with blood sugar control or weight loss. And so we think there are, you know, independent actions of GLP-1, perhaps through reduction of inflammation, that are also beneficial. And this is exactly what we try and study in the lab." We're now seeing a culture shift in how we view obesity. What do you make of that? "It's a very complex discussion. So let's say 10 years ago, we had a very understandable movement, which was 'healthy at any size.' Don't focus on your weight per se, focus on your health, which I still think is a very powerful message. And part of that messaging was because we didn't have solutions other than bariatric surgery to allow people to become healthier, perhaps at a lower body weight.... And in society, there tends to be a segment of our society that looks at people living with obesity and says, 'Well, you know, it's just willpower. If you really wanted to lose weight, you could, you're just not trying' or 'You're lazy,' or you know, 'You're weak.' "And we know that many of these people that we see in clinical practice have been on very calorie-reduced diets and working out and doing everything that we asked them to do. But their brains are defending a higher body weight.... And now with the GLP-1 medicines, we see that... we can help people lose weight. And I think this is very powerful because the people who were struggling before who could not do it by themselves can now lose 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 pounds." Do you have any trepidation or thoughts about these drugs being used by people who may not need them? "Well, you're speaking to the person who worries about everything, so of course I have concerns... It's been a little bit like The Hunger Games. People have to phone six pharmacies and find one that had a month's worth of drugs and then drive as fast as they could to that drugstore to get them, which is not great. And so while that's happening, to see other people getting a prescription because Uncle Harry's wedding is coming up in two months and they just want to lose a little bit of weight so they can look a little more fit at Uncle Harry's wedding — you know, as a physician, I say, 'Wait a sec, this person living with heart disease and Type 2 diabetes needs these medicines to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Maybe that should be a priority as a society over you looking a little better for Uncle Harry's wedding.' So that's been one dilemma. "And then the other big challenge that we still have is these medicines are very expensive. In many jurisdictions, we don't have everyone with access to a drug plan. We don't [have] every drug plan agreeing to reimburse for the medicines. "And finally... we don't have clinical trials on healthier people without diabetes, without a higher body weight that are studied [to know], 'Well, are there any particular side effects in this group of individuals?' They weren't studied in the clinical trials. Is there something we should be worried about, going on and off the drugs when you want to lose that healthy? We don't know. And so we have to always be mindful of what we don't know about the safety of these medicines."
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Newsroom Ready: Canadian scientist wins Breakthrough Prize for discovery of hormone used in Ozempic, Mounjaro
Dr. Daniel Drucker of the University of Toronto is sharing a US$3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences prize with four international colleagues for discovering and developing the GLP-1 hormone used in now-famous diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. They received the award at a ceremony in Los Angeles on April 5, 2025. (April 7, 2025)
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ozempic Literally Came From a Monster – And It's Not Alone
The toxic bite of a Gila monster can kill a human, but a specific ingredient in the cocktail of the lizard's venom is the reason we have glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) agonists like Ozempic and Wegovy. At the end of the 20th century, endocrinologist Daniel Drucker was looking for a hormone similar enough to the human gut's GLP-1, which would have similar appetite-suppressing and blood sugar-regulating qualities, without being broken down by the human body so quickly. Drucker had read about the work of endocrinologist John Eng, gastroenterologist Jean-Pierre Raufman and biochemist John Pisano, who had sequenced the proteins in Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) venom and found two that looked like human GLP-1. Drucker and his team from the University of Toronto acquired a Gila monster from the Utah Zoo's breeding program to dissect for further research. This work confirmed that the lizard species' unique genes produce a protein, Exendin-4, that fit the bill, mimicking GLP-1 while hanging round in the human body for far longer. A synthetic version was created in the years after, but it took until 2005 for this GLP-1 agonist to become an FDA-approved treatment for type 2 diabetes. It's now also become a popular treatment for obesity, with further potential applications on the horizon. This isn't the only time we've relied on the chemical arsenal of toxic animals. Life-saving drugs have emerged from the crucible of the natural world many times throughout history. One of the top-selling drugs worldwide originates, ironically, from a snake's venom – but it's far from 'snake oil'. Lisinopril reduces the chemicals that constrict blood flow, which is why it's prescribed for high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and to heart attack survivors. But the maker of its natural form, the Brazilian viper (Bothrops jararaca), evolved to produce enzyme inhibitors that help venom spread smoothly through the doomed body of its prey. Sea sponges are among the most ancient animals on this planet, so they've had a long time to cook up some interesting molecules. The Caribbean sponge (Tectitethya crypta) produces strange nucleosides which, in lieu of an immune system, protect it from the onslaught of foreign DNA introduced to its sessile body by predators and prey as it filter feeds. These nucleosides provided the inspiration for the chemotherapy drug cytarabine, which is among the WHO's List of Essential Medicines for its use in treating non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and leukemia. Animal toxins are proving useful in treating other cancers, too. In 2004, oncologist Jim Olson was dismayed to discover that even after a 14-hour surgery to remove a tumor from a teenage girl's brain, a thumb-sized piece of the cancer had been left behind. He assembled a team to find a molecule that would help surgeons see cancers with the naked eye, and thanks to newly assembled DNA databases, they were able to find a suitable candidate in a matter of weeks. Its unlikely origin? The venom of one of the most dangerous scorpions on Earth, the deathstalker (Leiurus quinquestriatus). In isolation, the peptide chlorotoxin Cy5.5 had already been found to bind to ion channels on brain tumor cells, but not to normal human cells. The lab-made version, Tozuleristide, creates a kind of light-up 'paint' under near-infrared that has allowed researchers to see cancerous clusters as small as a few hundred cells in rodent studies. From GLP-1 agonists to chemotherapy treatments, it's incredible that the toxic potions brewed up by the animal kingdom can be used to improve and save human lives. And a humbling reminder that the answers to our problems may be found in unexpected places, if we are willing to look further afield, and of course, if those species and their habitats still exist by the time we get there. H/T Katie Dangerfield at Global News Sexual Competition May Actually Boost Men's Semen Quality The Cause of Alzheimer's Might Be Coming From Inside Your Mouth Your Scented Wax Melts Can Pollute Indoor Air as Much as a Diesel Engine
