In cooperation with the Charité the Schering Stiftung presents a scientific lecture by this year’s Ernst Schering Prize Laureate Professor Dr. Matthias Tschöp.

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 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, GLP1, and Glucagon receptors. Although the 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. The first FDA approved form is the dual GIP/GLP1-R co-agonist Tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Eli Lilly and Co.), followed by a first representative of the triple GIP/Glucagon/GLP1-R hormone drug class (Retatrutide, Eli Lilly and Co). Clinical data prove the ability of these multi receptor drugs to decrease body weight by 25% in human obesity and decrease HbA1C by 2.5% in diabetes. In summary, the unprecedented efficacy of these novel multi receptor drugs offers the potential to overcome human obesity and reverse the diabetes pandemic.

The lecture is aimed at scientists, physicians and students.