Lotte Bjerre Knudsen: Shivering with Curiosity

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ozempic is one of the most import new medications in a generation. The scientist who created it is a self-described "nerd," who grew up on a farm in Denmark and has no interest in the limelight. Lotte Knudsen started her career working on laundry detergent enzymes, but eventually joined a team at the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk that was tasked with looking for new treatments for diabetes. She was convinced that a recently discovered human hormone called GLP-1 could be made into a powerful medication, not only for Type 2 diabetes, but also for weight loss. It took 20 years of hard work and persistence for her and her team to figure it out, but their creation now shows promise as a worthy foe of heart disease, kidney disease, Parkinson's, alcoholism & Alzheimer's as well. In this episode Lotte Knudsen tells her story, and we hear from two of the other scientists who made critical contributions to this revolution in medicine: Mads Thomsen and Daniel Drucker.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Alice.
0:04.8	When Lottie Knudsen takes the metro to work in Copenhagen, no one but her friends recognize her.
0:11.9	No one stops to ask for her autograph.
0:14.9	In fact, Danish friends of mine who were journalists told me they'd never heard of her,
0:20.6	which is pretty remarkable considering
0:22.7	she was the lead scientist who helped create what's been called the most important
0:28.6	life-changing medicine in decades. But Lottie Knudsen likes it that way. She has little
0:35.9	interest in the limelight.
0:38.3	I'm part of the team, right? I led a team and I wouldn't be able to get anything done without my team.
0:45.3	So there's, I don't have any financial interest in these medicines and I don't get any royalties.
0:52.3	And I also, I have to say I'm not super interested in it either, right?
0:58.3	Because I'm always just the inside of me is still the same little nerdy scientist
1:03.9	that was so happy to finally get that job.
1:07.0	And I'm still that person.
1:09.3	It's the process that's the exciting one.
1:12.1	The drug Lottie Knutzen created with her team is OZempic,
1:17.2	a drug that continues to make headlines
1:19.6	as its successes and potential uses multiply.
1:24.3	It's a treatment for type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, kidney disease,
1:30.7	possibly Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and alcoholism as well. The science is still unfolding.
1:37.6	But the success of OZempec and the company that makes it Novo Nordisk has already changed lives
1:45.3	and dramatically boosted the GDP of Denmark.
	...

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