Medical Biotechnology => GLP-1, liraglutide, semaglutide.

Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, a Danish scientist and university professor, led the development of liraglutide and oversaw the development of semaglutide, two notable drugs now approved for the treatment of diabetes and obesity.

Born in 1964, Knudsen originally studied chemical engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, and obtained a doctorate in scientific medicine from the University of Copenhagen in 2014.

GLP-1 had been previously identified by various researchers in Denmark and the US as a hormone that controls apetite. A major challenge was that the GLP-1 hormone has a very short half life. Knudsen’s team screened numerous chemical compounds to identify whether they could bind to the GLP-1 receptor sufficiently to stimulate insulin secretion. Eventually, they developed a new compound called liraglutide, which is an agonist for the GLP-1 receptor. Knudsen’s team, specifically Jesper Lau and Thomas Kruse, then worked on what became semaglutide, which has greater stability and affinity to albumin, lengthening its duration of action further to a once-weekly drug.

She has spent most of her career at Novo Nordisk, a Danish manufacturer of Insulin and other medications, starting in 1989. She served as an adjunct faculty member at Aarhus University from 2015-2020, as a professor in translational medicine.

At Novo Nordisk, as a student, she was initially working on laundry detergent enzymes. Much later, as the Chief Scientific Advisor at Novo Nordisk, Knudsen was the key force who pushed hard to develop GLP-1 drugs for treating diabetes, obesity and subsequently for Alzheimer’s. The many years long project, whose result are now providing significant benefits to millions and healthy profits for Novo Nordisk, was almost cancelled several times if not for Knudsen determination.

“My message to all young aspiring scientists is to believe in your ideas and pursue them with determination. A life where scientific thinking drives you, is always an exciting one” Knudsen said when accepting one of her awards.

Knudsen received the 2024 Lasker Medical Research Award, and the 2024 AAAS Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award. That recognition is richly deserved, since it is unclear if the GLP-1 drug path to obesity treatment, and all the associated benefits, would have been seen at this time without her influence. In 2025, Knudsen received the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.