Svetlana Mojsov

Biosketch

Svetlana Mojsov was born in Skopje, North Macedonia ( former Yugoslavia). She graduated from the University of Belgrade in 1971 with a degree in physical chemistry and in 1972 was accepted in the graduate program at Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Professor Bruce Merrifiled. Mojsov obtained PhD in 1978 and remained in Merrifield group as Postdoctoral Associate and later as Research Associate.
In 1983 Mojsov was appointed a member of the Endocrine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and inaugural director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute peptide core facility at MGH. Her research between 1983 and 1990 at the Endocrine Unit established that GLP-1 is an incretin and has therapeutic potential for treatment of Type 2 diabetes.
In 1990 Mojsov returned to Rockefeller University as Assistant Professor and was promoted to Research Associate Professor in 2002.
Mojsov is a co-inventor on series of patents licensed by the Massachusetts General Hospital to Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical company that developed GLP-1 analogs, liraglutide and later semaglutide, for Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Mojsov’s work on GLP-1 has received national and international recognition including the following awards and prizes: 2023-Vinfuture Prize for Innovation; 2023-Nature’s 10 Influential Scientists; 2024-Pearl Meister Greengard Award; 2024-Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People; 2024-Time 100 Health; 2024-Lasker-DeBakey Medical Clinical Award; 2024-Tang Prize; 2024-Princess of Asturias Prize; 2025-Warren Tri-annual Prize; 2025-BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award; 2025-Breakthrough Prize; 2025-Election to the National Academy of Sciences USA; 2025-Distinguished Medical Science Award; 2025-Spector Prize from Columbia University, 2025-Helen Dean King Award from Wistar Institute.

Research Interests

Dr. Mojsov’s long standing interests have been in understanding the role of peptides in glucose metabolism.
During her doctoral and postdoctoral research with Dr. Bruce Merrifield at the Rockefeller University in New York Mojsov developed efficient synthetic strategies to obtain glucagon and glucagon analogs by the solid phase method with a goal to study glucagon biology and glucose metabolism. These studies set the stage for her discovery of GLP-1 in the 1980’s.
Mojsov identified the biologically active sequence of GLP-1 to be a 31- amino acid long GLP-1 (7-37) and established that it is an incretin or a peptide secreted in the intestine when we eat a meal and stimulates insulin release from the pancreas at low concentration that exists in the blood stream. In clinical studies Mojsov and collaborators showed that GLP-1stimulates insulin secretion and lowers blood glucose in healthy and Type 2 diabetic individuals. These were the first studies that established the therapeutic potential of GLP-1 as a new treatment for diabetes.
In follow up experiments Mojsov showed that GLP-1 receptors are expressed in organs beyond the pancreas including the brain, heart and kidney, indicating that identical GLP-1 receptors would regulate multiple physiological functions.
The GLP-1 receptor analog semaglutide, also known as Ozempic and Wegovy, developed by Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical company is the first example of a single medicine that is used for diabetes, inhibition of appetite, weight loss and has beneficial cardiovascular and renal effects.