2023 Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement
Matthias H. Tschöp, MD
Banting Medal Lecture
"Overcoming Obesity: The Discovery of Multi Receptor Drugs"
Matthias Tschöp is Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor at the Technical University Munich, CEO of Helmholtz Munich, and Vice President of the German Helmholtz Association. He started as a physician-scientist in 1993 at Munich University Medicine, where he first encountered patients struggling with obesity and its associated complications. At that time, obesity was a disease largely untreatable by any safe pharmacology. Inspired by the discovery of the satiety hormone leptin, Matthias Tschöp devoted his career to finding a cure for obesity. In 2000 he identified ghrelin as the first and only circulating hunger hormone, and its obesity promoting actions in the brain. Based on studies of ghrelin, gut hormones and brain circuits, Tschöp and his long-term chemistry collaborator, Richard DiMarchi hypothesized that integrated action of specific hormones might provide safe and unprecedented weight lowering to reverse obesity. They pioneered a series of single molecule therapeutics, which simultaneously activate two or more hormone receptors to achieve unprecedented body weight, glucose and lipid lowering. This novel form of dual and triple hormone pharmacology includes agonists to GIP, GLP-1, and Glucagon receptors. Their uncovering of the metabolic benefits of GIP and glucagon went against the common dogma at the time. Multiple representatives of the new drug class Tschöp and DiMarchi discovered are successfully advancing in clinical trials, and the first FDA approved form is the dual GIP/GLP-1 co-agonist Tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Eli Lilly and Co.). Its breakthrough ability to overcome human obesity validates the virtue of integrated combinatorial pharmacology and reaches efficacy comparable to gastric bypass surgery.
Please join us in celebrating Matthias H. Tschöp for his outstanding contributions to diabetes research.