BIO
Svetlana Mojsov (Skopje, North Macedonia, 1947), now an American national, graduated with a BS in Physical Chemistry from the University of Belgrade (Serbia) in 1971, then went on to complete a PhD in Biochemistry seven years later at The Rockefeller University (New York). After doing postdoctoral research at the same center, in 1983 she took up a position in the Endocrine Unit and as an Assistant in Biochemistry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she also headed the Howard Hughes Medical Institute peptide synthesis facility, at the same time working as an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In 1990 she returned to The Rockefeller University, where he has held the position of Research Associate Professor since 2002. Mojsov’s research has resulted in five patents, four of which she obtained after Massachusetts General Hospital amended an initial registration that failed to recognize her contribution.
CONTRIBUTION
In the 1980s, a group of scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, set out to explore the potential of the newly discovered hormones known as glucagon-like peptides. When Joel Habener succeeded in cloning the gene that coded for these hormones, Svetlana Mojsov, then working in another lab in the same hospital, began looking at their chemical properties to determine which of their forms might have biological activity in living beings. She managed to identify and synthesize one such form, the GLP-1 peptide, and to show that, in small quantities, it stimulated insulin production in the pancreas of rats. Later on, she also observed that GLP-1 lowered blood glucose in individuals with diabetes.
These discoveries paved the way for the development of new drugs for type 2 diabetes and obesity, which have been game-changing for the treatment of these two conditions. Various diabetes drugs were already in use, but the fact that GLP-1 only stimulates insulin production when blood sugar levels are high means that the new treatments carry a much lower risk of these levels dropping below the safe limit.
In addition, most previous treatments caused weight gain in diabetes patients, diminishing their overall effectiveness. With GLP-1, this side effect not only disappears, but the drug actually helps patients lose weight, providing a two-way improvement in the disease prognosis.
On the obesity score, they have achieved first-time reductions in body mass of up to 20%. Recently, moreover, these new medications have been observed to reduce the risk of other complications of both type 2 diabetes and obesity. Further, the use of GLP-1 analogs for treatments of addiction and neurological disorders is currently being evaluated.
