For centuries, physicians and researchers have searched in vain for drugs to effectively and safely normalize the body weight of patients with obesity and diabetes. Through his groundbreaking discovery of the new therapeutic class of dual and triple gut hormone drugs, the so-called polyagonists, Tschöp was able for the first time to pave the way for a pharmacological cure of obesity and for the prevention of Type 2 diabetes.

In this year’s Ernst Schering Prize Lecture, he will trace the discovery from dissecting the underlying pathophysiology to the approval of anti-obesity drugs. Inspired by the discovery of the satiety hormone leptin, Tschöp dedicated his career to the search for a cure against obesity. In 2000, he identified ghrelin as the first and only circulating hunger hormone and its obesity-promoting effect in the brain. Based on his studies of gut-brain signalling, he discovered three new classes of therapeutics which for the first time in the history of medicine enable an effective medical treatment of human obesity.

The first FDA-approved form is the dual GIP/GLP1 receptor coagonist tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Eli Lilly and Co.), followed by a first representative of the triple GIP/glucagon/GLP1 receptor agonist (Retatrutide, Eli Lilly). Clinical data show the ability of these multi-receptor drugs to reduce the body weight of people with obesity by 25% and the HbA1C level in diabetes patients by 2.5%. For the first time, the effect of a medical agent corrects obesity to a level comparable to gastric bypass surgery.

A visionary physician and scientist, Matthias Tschöp serves as a model for future generations of researchers and physicians: He identified a major unmet medical need (obesity), discovered essential signaling pathways (hunger hormone ghrelin), and decoded gut-brain signals to discover several agents that today are clinically validated, first-class therapeutics against obesity and diabetes.