“GLP-1 regulates appetite, metabolism, and has the potential to transform medicine”

Recognized with the 17th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine, Danish physician Jens Holst explains how he identified GLP-1, a key gut hormone that not only stimulates insulin secretion and regulates blood glucose but also modulates appetite and food intake, acting as a true “master hormone” of metabolism. He highlights how GLP-1 receptor agonists have revolutionized treatment by achieving remission in type 2 diabetes, enabling unprecedented weight loss in obesity, and significantly reducing cardiovascular events, while also exhibiting anti-inflammatory and protective effects on the heart, kidneys, liver, and brain.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biology and Biomedicine category has gone in this seventeenth edition to Professors Daniel Joshua Drucker, Joel Habener, Jens Juul Holst and Svetlana Mojsov, “for their discovery and characterisation of the biologically active form of the hormone glucacon-like peptide (GLP-1)”