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 endocrinology researcher at the University of Toronto, said he has spent 40 years learning about the hormone’s ability to spur weight loss and stimulate insulin production to treat diabetes.
Drucker shares a prize worth US$3 million with four colleagues from the United States and Denmark who were also involved in GLP1’s journey from the lab to pharmacies.
He said it’s rewarding to see it result in medications that help people living with obesity lose weight and live healthy lives.
Drucker says research now shows that GLP1 medications can help reduce heart attacks, strokes and death from cardiovascular disease.
He said there is also promising research suggesting it could reduce inflammation and possibly treat arthritis, kidney disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
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Another Canadian, Maaike van Kooten of National Research Council Canada, shared a US$100,000 prize called New Horizons in Physics with two international colleagues for work in optics to view exoplanets.
The Breakthrough prizes — often referred to as the Oscars of Science — were awarded at a ceremony in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The Breakthrough Foundation said the prizes were created to “celebrate the wonders of our scientific age.”
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.
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