Weight-loss-drug pioneer: this biochemist finally gained recognition for her work 减肥药先锋：这位生物化学家终于因其工作获得了认可

This story is part of Nature’s 10, an annual list compiled by Nature’s editors exploring key developments in science and the individuals who contributed to them.
这个故事是《自然》杂志年度十大科学进展名单的一部分,该名单由《自然》杂志的编辑们编制,旨在探索科学领域的关键发展及其贡献者。

A new class of weight-loss drugs has swept into clinics and made medicines such as Ozempic and Wegovy household names. They have generated billions of dollars in profit for the pharmaceutical industry and brought scientific acclaim for the researchers credited with discovering the hormone behind them: an appetite suppressant called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1).
一类新的减肥药物已经进入诊所,并使得Ozempic和Wegovy等药物成为家喻户晓的名字。它们为制药行业带来了数十亿美元的利润,并为发现其背后的激素——一种名为胰高血糖素样肽-1(GLP-1)的食欲抑制剂的研究人员带来了科学赞誉。

But there is one early pioneer who has not received due acknowledgement: Svetlana Mojsov. A biochemist now at The Rockefeller University in New York City, Mojsov had a pivotal role in identifying and characterizing the active form of GLP-1. Yet her efforts went unrecognized in many accounts of the hormone’s discovery, and she has not shared the scientific prizes bestowed for that feat.
但有一位早期的先驱者并未得到应有的认可:Svetlana Mojsov。作为现在纽约市洛克菲勒大学的一名生物化学家,Mojsov在识别和描述GLP-1活性形式中发挥了关键作用。然而,在许多关于这种激素发现的记载中,她的努力并未被认可,她也没有分享因这一成就而颁发的科学奖项。

This year, Mojsov fought the entrenched narratives — and began to win wider recognition for her contributions to the field. “All I’m trying to do is put the scientific record straight,” she says.
今年,莫约索夫挑战了根深蒂固的叙述,并开始为她对该领域的贡献赢得更广泛的认可。“我所做的一切,只是想纠正科学记录,”她说。

A Yugoslavian-born scientist now in her mid-seventies, Mojsov was a member of the endocrine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston in the 1980s, where she also directed a facility that made synthetic proteins for use in the unit and beyond. During this time, she conducted a series of landmark studies and supplied others with the research tools needed to make their own advances.
一位出生于南斯拉夫的科学家,现年七十多岁的莫伊索夫是20世纪80年代波士顿马萨诸塞州总医院(MGH)内分泌单位的成员,她还负责管理一个制造用于该单位及其他地方的合成蛋白质的设施。在此期间,她进行了一系列具有里程碑意义的研究,并为其他人提供了进行自己研究进展所需的研究工具。

Her own work with GLP-1 started when she predicted that a particular version of the hormone should exist in mammalian gut tissue. Mojsov then experimentally confirmed that prediction (S. Mojsov et al. J. Biol. Chem. 261, 11880–11889; 1986). She next showed that this biologically active form of GLP-1 could trigger insulin release from the pancreas of a rat (S. Mojsov et al. J. Clin. Invest. 79, 616–619; 1987).
她自己对GLP-1的研究始于她预测哺乳动物肠道组织中应该存在一种特定版本的激素。Mojsov随后通过实验确认了这一预测(S. Mojsov等人。J. Biol. Chem. 261, 11880-11889;1986年)。接下来,她展示了这种生物活性形式的GLP-1能够触发大鼠胰腺释放胰岛素(S. Mojsov等人。J. Clin. Invest. 79, 616-619;1987年)。

Peptides and antibodies created by Mojsov were also instrumental to several other GLP-1 experiments performed in cell lines at the time, and allowed clinicians to demonstrate that GLP-1 could lower blood glucose in an early human trial.
莫伊索夫创造的肽和抗体对当时在细胞系中进行的几个其他GLP-1实验也起了关键作用,并且使临床医生能够在早期人体试验中证明GLP-1能够降低血糖。

This research set the stage for drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, both of which feature a GLP-1 analogue called semaglutide. It incorporates only minor modifications from the peptide outlined in Mojsov’s original paper; the changes improve stability and ensure longer-lasting effects. Global sales of semaglutide are now worth more than US$1 billion a month, and this class of drugs is forecast to become one of the best-selling medicines of all time.
这项研究为奥泽匹克和韦戈维等药物的开发奠定了基础,这两种药物都含有一种名为赛格列汀的GLP-1类似物。它仅对Mojsov最初论文中描述的肽进行了微小的修改;这些改动提高了稳定性并确保了更持久的效果。赛格列汀的全球销售额现在每月超过10亿美元,预计这类药物将成为有史以来最畅销的药物之一。

She had to endure a protracted legal battle to have her name added to foundational patents as a co-inventor, a move that earned Mojsov royalties for a year or two connected to sales of a first-generation GLP-1 drug. But, with her patents long expired, she has no financial stake in the semaglutide windfall.
她不得不忍受漫长的法律斗争,才将自己的名字作为共同发明人添加到基础专利上,这一举动使得Mojsov因第一代GLP-1药物的销售而获得了一两年的版税。但是,由于她的专利早已过期,她在赛格列汀的意外收益中没有任何经济利益。

The lack of recognition started to grate on Mojsov. History was being “manipulated”, she says. For example, she felt that commentaries published to coincide with prizes exaggerated some of the winners’ contributions at her expense.
莫约索夫开始感到缺乏认可让她感到不快。她说,历史正在被“操纵”。例如,她觉得与奖项同时发布的评论文章夸大了一些获奖者的贡献,而忽视了她的付出。

“That was a wake-up call for me,” Mojsov says. She began to speak out.
“那对我来说是一个警钟,”莫约索夫说。她开始发声。

At her urging, journals such as Cell and Nature have revised narratives of GLP-1’s discovery to better reflect Mojsov’s involvement at MGH — one of the two places, along with the University of Copenhagen, where researchers independently homed in on and characterized the active form of the hormone. In September 2023, the journal Science and the news outlet STAT published two lengthy profiles that, some 40 years after she began working on GLP-1, finally told her side of the story.
在她的敦促下,像《细胞》和《自然》这样的期刊修订了GLP-1发现的叙述,以更好地反映Mojsov在MGH的参与——这是两个独立定位并描述了该激素活性形式的地方之一,另一个是哥本哈根大学。2023年9月,《科学》杂志和新闻媒体STAT发表了两篇详尽的个人简介,大约在她开始研究GLP-1四十年后,终于讲述了她的故事。

E-mails of support have since poured in — from fellow scientists, especially women, who felt that their own work had been sidelined, and from others frustrated by the hierarchies of biomedical research.
自那以后,支持的电子邮件纷至沓来——来自同行科学家,特别是那些感觉自己的工作被边缘化的女性,以及对生物医学研究的等级制度感到沮丧的其他人。

The attention focused on Mojsov has also begun to change the minds of some who were involved in early GLP-1 research.
对Mojsov的关注也开始改变一些早期参与GLP-1研究的人的想法。

“She’s got a point,” says Joel Habener, a molecular endocrinologist at MGH. Habener collaborated with Mojsov, appearing as the senior author on all her seminal papers, but was the sole patent holder before Mojsov had the patents corrected. “She absolutely deserves to be recognized,” he says.
“她说得有道理,”MGH的分子内分泌学家乔尔·哈贝纳说。哈贝纳与莫约索夫合作,在她所有的开创性论文中担任高级作者,但在莫约索夫更正专利之前,他是唯一的专利持有人。“她绝对应该得到认可,”他说。

In past accounts of the discovery, Mojsov was mischaracterized as a scientist in Habener’s group, rather than an independent investigator whose efforts helped to propel the MGH endeavour. “Her contributions were essential,” says Richard Goodman, a molecular neurobiologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland who, as a postdoc of Habener’s, helped to decode the gene behind a precursor to GLP-1. “Would it have moved forward without Svetlana? No.”
在过去关于这一发现的记述中,莫伊索夫被错误地描述为哈贝纳小组的一名科学家,而不是一位独立调查者,其努力帮助推动了MGH的事业。俄勒冈健康与科学大学波特兰分校的分子神经生物学家理查德·古德曼说:“她的贡献是至关重要的。”作为哈贝纳的博士后,古德曼帮助破译了GLP-1前体背后的基因。“没有斯韦特兰娜,这项工作会向前推进吗?不会。”

Prizes — and the prestige they bring — could follow, but that is not the top priority for Mojsov, who continues to study GLP-1 and related proteins in her lab.
奖项和它们带来的声望可能会随之而来,但这不是Mojsov最优先考虑的事,她在实验室里继续研究GLP-1和相关蛋白。

“I am just happy that my work is recognized,” she says. “Everything else is secondary.”
"我只是很高兴我的工作得到了认可,"她说。"其他的都是次要的。"

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03927-1

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