“[The Lasker] honors the progression from discovery, which was made in academia on the bench, to development by the pharmaceutical industry to a medicine.” Svetlana Mojsov, PhD, Rockefeller University
“We’re in a phase where GLP-1-based drugs are being considered as potential cures for every condition under the sun.”
Randy Seeley, PhD, professor of surgery, internal medicine, and nutritional sciences, University of Michigan
Most people are aware of the Nobel Prizes—five separate prizes awarded in October each year for outstanding achievements in the following areas: Physiology or Medicine; Physics; Chemistry; Literature; Economics; and Peace. (On October 7, 2024, the Nobel Assembly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA.) But few if any people outside the scientific community are aware of the Lasker Awards—awards given in September of each year in the categories of Basic Research, Clinical Research, and Public Service.
In this week’s Germ Gems post, I present some background on Albert Lasker and provide an overview of two of this year’s Lasker awards: the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award and the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.
What are the Lasker Awards? Albert Lasker was a German-born American businessman who played a major role in shaping modern advertising. (Many experts consider him the founder of modern advertising.) After a phenomenally successful business career, in 1945, he and his wife, Mary Woodward Lasker, created the Lasker Awards to recognize outstanding contributions to medical science and public service. Each award category carries a $250,000 prize.
The awards are sometimes referred to as the “American Nobels” because they often identify future Nobel Prize winners. To date, eighty-eight Lasker laureates have gone on to receive the Nobel prize. This year’s Nobel laureates Ambros and Ruvkun along with another colleague shared the 2008 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.
The 2024 Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award. Quarraisha Abdool-Karim and Salim Abdool-Karim of Columbia University in New York and the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa shared this year’s Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award (previously known as the Albert Lasker Public Service Award) for their life-saving HIV research.
This wife-and-husband epidemiologist team uncovered the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls, and laid the foundation for highly effective methods of HIV prevention in Africa. (See “‘America’s Nobel’ goes to a power couple who made a startling discovery” NPR, September 30, 2024). They helped establish a training program that benefited hundreds of scientists and helped establish world class HIV/AIDS research centers across Africa. In awarding this prize, the Lasker foundation said that this couple won the prize “for illuminating key drivers of heterosexual HIV transmission; introducing life-saving approaches to prevent and treat HIV; and statesmanship in public health policy and advocacy.”
The 2024 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. The Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Research is given for improvements in the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, or cure of disease. In 2008, the award was renamed the Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Research Award to honor the groundbreaking work of cardiac surgeon Michael E. Debakey.
Joel Habener, MD, (Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts), Svetlana Mojsov, PhD, (Rockefeller University, New York, New York), and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, DMSc (Nova Nordisk, Copenhagen, Denmark) received this year’s Lasker-DeBakey Award for their work on glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1).
GLP-1 is a hormone that the small intestine releases after eating that plays a key role in regulating blood sugar (glucose) levels, appetite and digestion. Habener and Mojsov identified and characterized the GLP-1 hormone in the 1980s. Mojsov then went on to uncover the chemically active form of GLP-1, a critical step in creating a viable drug. And Knudsen led the team that created the first GLP-1 agonist drug approved for obesity.
GLP-1 agonists are a class of drugs that mainly help manage blood sugar levels in Type 2 diabetes. They work by mimicking GLP-1 to trigger the release of insulin and reduce the production of glucagon.
GLP-1 based drugs are transforming the management of obesity. As obesity is a well-recognized risk factor for several types of infections, including respiratory tract infections, skin and soft tissue infections, urinary tract infections, sepsis, and pandemic viral infections, such as influenza and COVID-19, managing obesity with GLP-1 agonists should mitigate infection risks.
2024 Lasker Awards address big health problems. In 2023, almost 40 million people were living with HIV. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 42.4% of U.S. adults are obese, and according to the World Health Organization 1 in 8 people worldwide were living with obesity in 2022. The 2024 Lasker awards for public service and for clinical medicine address these two huge health problems.
The need for improved HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention measures remains a high priority. The 2024 Lasker-Bloomberg award recognized the remarkable achievements of the Abdool-Karims, and the prize money will help them continue their work.
In the last few years, the explosive impacts of metabolism-correcting, weight-moderating medicines like semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovny) have revolutionized the health care universe. The mechanism of action of GLP-1 agonists involves an effect in the central nervous system that leads to suppression of craving, not only for foods but also for alcohol and drugs of abuse. (See “Semaglutide a Potential Treatment Option for Opioid Use Disorder?” Medscape September 27, 2024). GLP-1 agonists could be a game changer, not only of the management of obesity but also of addiction disorders. Moreover, clinical trials of GLP-1 agonists are already underway in Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
While more clinical trials are necessary, in my opinion, the discoveries by this year’s Lasker Award recipients have momentous implications for the management of some of the most serious and common human health problems. As Lotte Knudsen said, “There is no other example in the history of medicine for one biology to do so many different things at the same time. We’re just starting to see [GPL-1’s] effects in many tissues, and it’s likely there are still more to find.”
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