Lotte Knudsen

People can’t stop talking about the revolutionary potential of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss — and a good part of the credit for the medications’ very existence goes to Danish scientist Lotte Knudsen, whose persistent research beginning in the 1990s  “almost single-handedly kept Novo Nordisk in the GLP-1 game,” eventually leading to the company’s blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, as STAT’s Megan Molteni wrote in an exclusive profile last year. Knudsen, who also received STAT’s 2023 Biomedical Innovation Award for her career achievements, says there may yet be more potential in GLP-1 drugs to treat diseases like Alzheimer’s. “I’m actually quite patient,” she told Molteni. “When it comes to slowly working to progress something that could be important in the future, that needs to take its time.”