2019 Wolf Prize in Medicine to Dr. Jeffrey Friedman @RockefellerUniv for Discovery of the Satiety Protein Hormone, Leptin which Regulates the Sensation of Hunger

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2019 Wolf Prize in Medicine to Dr. Jeffrey Friedman @RockefellerUniv for Discovery of the Satiety Protein Hormone, Leptin which Regulates the Sensation of Hunger

June 10, 2019 by 2012pharmaceutical

2019 Wolf Prize in Medicine to Dr. Jeffrey Friedman @RockefellerUniv for Discovery of the Satiety Protein Hormone, Leptin which Regulates the Sensation of Hunger

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

Medicine: The satiety hormone
The prize in Medicine will be awarded to Jeffrey Friedman from Rockefeller University in New York, for discovering the hormone leptin, which regulates the sensation of hunger.
Friedman (65) grew up in New York and graduated from medical school at the early age of 22. Later on, he fell in love with research, acquired his PhD in Molecular Genetics, and received a faculty position at Rockefeller. He was interested in understanding the factors that contribute to obesity, and studied a strain of mice with a mutation in a specific gene that made the mice fatter than regular mice. Friedman wanted to understand how a change in just one gene could lead to such an extreme transition, and after eight years of research using the most advanced genetic tools of the time, he identified the gene ob, and later, its product – a protein hormone he termed leptin. He found that leptin, secreted by fat cells into the blood, affects the brain. Under fat shortage leptin levels drop – leading to an increased appetite; while high levels of leptin signal the presence of excess fat and lead to a sensation of fullness, or satiety. Therefore, in certain situations of obesity, leptin treatment may assist in reducing appetite and facilitating weight loss.
Friedman’s studies paved the way for a fuller understanding of the system that regulates hunger and satiety, which has led to the development of new drugs and treatment.

A hormone that revealed the mechanism of hunger regulation and served to develop treatments for obesity. Jeffrey Friedman | Photograph: Wolf Foundation

SOURCE

https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en/online/sciencenews/2019-wolf-prize

Jeffrey M. Friedman

Jeffrey M. Friedman, Marilyn M. Simpson Professor and head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, has been named the recipient of the 2019 Wolf Prize in Medicine. He is being recognized for his discovery of leptin, a hormone secreted by fat cells that modulates food intake and energy expenditure.
Friedman’s 1994 discovery of leptin, and of its receptor in the brain encoded by the obese gene, shed new light on the pathogenesis of obesity. He and his colleagues have since shown that leptin acts on sets of neurons in brain centers that regulate food intake and energy expenditure, and has powerful effects on reproduction, metabolism, other endocrine systems, and immune function. Defects in the leptin gene are associated with severe obesity in animals and humans.
“Jeff’s research has transformed our understanding of obesity. The fact that loss of a single hormone made by fat cells has such a profound effect on our drive to consume calories establishes a biological basis for obesity that is clearly not a simple failure of will-power,” says Rockefeller President Richard P. Lifton. “His research has opened a new field with great potential for advancing health and the understanding of the biological basis of behavior. This prestigious prize is richly deserved.”
Since 1978, the Wolf Foundation in Israel has awarded annual prizes in the arts and sciences, which are presented by the President of Israel. In addition to Friedman’s prize for Medicine, this year’s Wolf Prize recipients include an architect, a professor of agriculture and resource economics, two chemists, and a mathematician. The awardees will be honored at a Jerusalem ceremony led by the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, in May.
Previous Rockefeller recipients of the Wolf Prize in Medicine include Maclyn McCarty in 1990 and Jeffrey V. Ravetch in 2015. Three Rockefeller faculty have been recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics: Mitchell Feigenbaum and Albert Libchaber in 1986 and George Uhlenbeck in 1979.

SOURCE

https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/24785-jeffrey-m-friedman-receive-2019-wolf-prize-medicine/

ALL WOLF PRIZES IN MEDICINE AWARDED

http://www.wolffund.org.il/index.php?dir=site&page=winners&name=&prize=3016&year=&field=3006

The Wolf Prize in Medicine is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel.^[1] It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Arts. The Prize has been stated to be the second most prestigious award in science, and a significant predictor of the Nobel Prize.^[2]