She Found the Exact Structure of GLP-1—Three Decades Before Anyone Called It Ozempic

3 min readHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:Peptides are on the rise, but the history of GLP-1s goes much deeper than the past few years. GLP-1s, or glucagon-like peptides, are a class of medications that help manage type 2 diabetes and obesity. A researcher found the structure of GLP-1 decades ago, and she helped rewrite our understanding of the gut. Roughly 11 percent of Americans currently take a GLP-1 (or a glucagon-like peptide) for weight loss—a number that rose significantly from just 3 percent in 2024, according to the 2026 Gallup Health and Well-Being Index. Even for those who aren’t on the medication, awareness is still high, sitting at a whopping 90 percent, as per the same survey. But where exactly did the peptide boom come from? In short, scientists first needed to rewrite our understanding of the gut.For decades, the human digestive tract had been considered little more than a hollow tube: Food went in and, er, “garbage” came out. Starting in the 1970s, the gut and its role in insulin secretion from the pancreas came under deeper scrutiny. Medical researchers knew that insulin levels in the body increased more whenever people ate sugar, as opposed to when they received sugar injections into the bloodstream. The thinking was that something in the gut must be prompting this insulin response.In 1972, Svetlana Mojsov was a PhD student at Rockefeller University in New York City under the tutelage of biochemist Bruce Merrifield, who had developed a new, efficient way to produce peptides in a lab (for which he would win a Nobel Prize in 1984) called “solid-phase peptide synthesis.” For her doctoral thesis, Mojsov used this method to achieve something that had eluded researchers for decades: She successfully synthesized glucagon, a complex hormone the body produces to raise blood sugar levels when necessary, which was of particular interest to endocrinologists as a potential treatment for diabetes. If glucagon raised blood sugar, could it also be controlled or blocked in an effort to lower blood sugar levels?Mojsov moved to Massachusetts General Hospital in 1983, where she ran the lab for peptide synthesis. Just before she arrived, researchers at the hospital had discovered that the same gene that carries instructions for the body on how to make glucagon also tells the body how to make another hormone: GLP-1. To Mojsov, this seemed particularly promising.In the lab at Mass General, she homed in on a sequence of 31 amino acids that she believed to be the correct structure of GLP-1. Tests on rabbits and rats followed, and in 1986, she published a study showing that GLP-1 could be found in the gut tissue of rats. This cemented Mojsov’s place, according to STAT News, as being “the first to determine the active structure of the GLP-1 hormone.” Further tests showed that GLP-1 stimulated insulin production and blocked the secretion of glucagon. Mojsov then manufactured a large batch of synthetic GLP-1 that was used in tests on the pancreatic cells of rats. A second paper, published in 1987, was a landmark: The tests showed that GLP-1 led to insulin secretion.The next logical question: If GLP-1 could stimulate the release of insulin, which lowered the level of glucose in the bloodstream, could GLP-1 form the basis of a new treatment for diabetes? Yes, but there was a catch. The bodily hormones that rapidly break down naturally produced GLP-1 degrade synthetic GLP-1 just as fast—too fast for drug developers to determine whether a steady dose of GLP-1 would help diabetes patients.So how did scientists overcome this snag? Read the full story here.This story has reporting by Andrew Zaleski.Special Digital IssuesOctober/November 2026Download HereThis issue is optimized for mobile/tablet viewing.➡ America’s Radioactive Graveyard Is Quietly Leaking. 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