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Joel Habener Receives Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for Contributions to GLP-1 Medications

6 minute read

Dr. Habener is one of five scientists recognized for research that has led to highly effective treatment for diabetes and obesity.

A doctor delivers a lecture Joel Habener, MD, delivers a lecture detailing his role in discovering GLP-1 at the Warren Triennial Prize celebration at Massachusetts General Hospital last week.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) investigator emeritus Joel Habener, MD, has been named one of the winners of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, a prestigious award that honors transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life.

Dr. Habener received the award on Saturday along with Daniel J. Drucker, MD, Jens Juul Holst, MD, DMSc, Svetlana Mojsov, PhD, and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, PhD, DMSc.

According to the Breakthrough Prize committee, these five scientists' complementary contributions — from basic hormone discovery through physiological understanding to pharmaceutical development — have led to highly effective drugs for diabetes and obesity, ushering in a new era of GLP-1 medicines for cardiometabolic disorders.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Habener and colleagues discovered a class of glucagon-like peptides — hormones found in the gut that play a key role in the metabolic process of insulin production and regulation.

Pictured, from left, are 2025 Warren Triennial Prize winners Svetlana Mojsov, PhD, Joel Habener, MD, Daniel Drucker, MD, and Jens Holst, MD, DMSc
Pictured, from left, are 2025 Warren Triennial Prize winners Svetlana Mojsov, PhD, Joel Habener, MD, Daniel Drucker, MD, and Jens Holst, MD, DMSc.

These peptides, eventually named GLP-1 and GLP-2, are released into the blood with the ingestion of nutrients and affect insulin production, food intake, nutrient metabolism, energy production, gastric emptying, intestinal disease and other components of the digestive system.

Further work by Drs. Habener, Holst, and Drucker demonstrated that GLP-1 augmentation could potentially treat type 2 diabetes by increasing insulin output, reducing appetite and regulating blood glucose. Their discovery led to revolutionary drug therapies for type 2 diabetes and obesity, which have been shown not only to achieve better glucose control and contribute to weight loss but also prevent cardiovascular events.

Dr. Habener is the former director of the Laboratory of Molecular Endocrinology in the Endocrine Division and Department of Medicine at MGH, professor of Medicine at HMS and a former investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Habener also honored with the Warren Prize from MGH

This is the second major award that Dr. Habener and colleagues have received in the past week. On Wednesday, April 2, Drs. Habener, Drucker, Holt and Mojsov were named winners of the 2025 Warren Triennial Prize from MGH.

Named after John C. Warren, MD, the co-founder of MGH and its first surgeon, the Warren Triennial Prize was first given in 1871. In recent years, the prize has been presented as part of a lectureship by scientists recognized as outstanding in their fields, broadly described as "physiology, surgery, or pathological anatomy."

Since 1901, when the Nobel Prize was first awarded, 26 Warren recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.