5th of April The Breakthrough Prize Foundation announced the winners of the 2025 Breakthrough Prizes, honoring scientists driving remarkable discoveries in gene editing, human diseases, the fundamental particles of the Universe and its underlying mathematical principles.
The Breakthrough Prize – popularly known as the “Oscars® of Science” – was created to celebrate the wonders of our scientific age by founding sponsors Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.
MVA would like to congratulate Daniel J. Drucker, Joel Habener, Jens Juul Holst, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen and Svetlana Mojsov, who share the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
These five scientists’ complementary contributions – from basic hormone discovery through physiological understanding to pharmaceutical development – have led to highly effective drugs for diabetes and obesity, ushering in a new era of GLP-1 medicines for cardiometabolic disorders. Between them their breakthroughs include: the discovery of the gene encoding the GLP-1 hormone; the synthesis, isolation and characterization of the hormone’s biologically active forms; the demonstration that it is produced in the gut and stimulates insulin production; elucidation of its broader physiological roles, including control of appetite and energy homeostasis; the development of a more stable version of the hormone that continues to act in the body for days rather than hours; and its translation into a new class of drugs that is transforming the treatment of metabolic diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.