“We succeeded in cloning the glucagon gene”

Physician Joel Habener, awarded the 17th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Biomedicine, explains how his team cloned the glucagon gene and discovered the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), a hormone that stimulates glucose-dependent insulin secretion. He highlights how this breakthrough has transformed the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity, while also offering additional benefits in reducing cardiovascular risk, controlling inflammation, and potentially addressing neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

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)”