Canadian scientist awarded for discovering hormone used in Ozempic
Global News
Dr. Daniel Drucker shares the US$3 million prize with four colleagues in the U.S. and Denmark for discovering the GLP-1 hormone that's used in medications like Ozempic.
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 endocrinologist and a clinician-scientist at the University of Toronto and the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, shares the US$3 million prize with four colleagues from the United States and Denmark.
They were all involved in the development of the now-famous drugs manufactured by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. Drucker and three co-winners made discoveries about glucagon-like peptide-1 in their labs. The other recipient of the award, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, who works for Novo Nordisk, led the way in developing it into medications.
The Breakthrough Prizes, often referred to as the “Oscars of Science,” were handed out Saturday in Los Angeles for categories including Fundamental Physics and Mathematics, in addition to Life Sciences.
The Breakthrough Foundation says the prizes were created to “celebrate the wonders of our scientific age.” 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.
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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Dr. Daniel Drucker shares the US$3 million prize with four colleagues in the U.S. and Denmark for discovering the GLP-1 hormone that's used in medications like Ozempic.