Research into weight-loss drugs tipped for Nobel as award week opens

The winners of the six Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will be revealed daily from Oct 5-12.

STOCKHOLM – Research into hormones that regulate appetite is on everybody’s lips for the Nobel medicine prize, to be announced on Oct 5 when the 2026 Nobel season kicks off.

The winners of the six Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will be revealed daily from Oct 5-12.

The medicine prize, to be announced at 11.30am (0930 GMT or 5.30pm SGT) on Oct 5, could go to research that paved the way for weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, Nobel watchers told AFP.

That could include microbiome research, the discovery of the leptin and ghrelin hormones regulating satiety and hunger, and research into a hormone released by the intestine after we eat which signals satiety, called “glucagon-like peptide 1” (GLP-1), which drugs like Ozempic mimic.

“A Nobel Prize recognising any of that work is a likelihood,” said David Pendlebury, who heads research analysis at data analytics firm Clarivate, which predicts potential Nobel winners based on the number of citations of their work.

“I would put GLP-1 at the top of the list, just because of its enormous worldwide clinical impact,” he said.

Many scientists have made significant contributions in the field, though three regularly mentioned for the Nobel are Canadian endocrinologist Daniel Drucker, Danish physician Jens Juul Holst and Yugoslav-born American chemist Svetlana Mojsov.

If the Nobel Committee were to go in another direction, stem cell research into how skin regenerates and heals wounds could get the nod, with American cell biologist Elaine Fuchs and her British colleague Fiona Watt recognised as leaders in the field, according to Annika Ostman, science reporter at Swedish public broadcaster SR.

The honour could also go to a new imaging technique, called optical coherence tomography.

The non-invasive technique uses reflected light to create high-resolution, cross-sectional images of biological tissues, particularly the retina and optic nerve, allowing doctors to detect and monitor disease.

Yet another field that may have caught the medicine committee’s eye is that of adhesion receptors in the immune system, identified by US immunologist Timothy Springer.

These receptors are molecular grips on immune cells that help them stick to blood vessels, enter tissues, and reach infections.

They are crucial for directing the body’s immune defences and are targets for research into treatments of several inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Research into breast cancer or DNA sequencing that helped combat coronavirus could also be honoured.

The medicine prize will be followed by the prizes for physics on Oct 6 and chemistry on Oct 7.

The literature laureate will be revealed on Oct 8, with some pundits suggesting that the Swedish Academy could follow up the 2025 award to Hungary’s Laszlo Krasznahorkai with a woman writer, possibly from Latin America.

Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin, 48, could be one such pick, literary critic Lina Kalmteg told AFP.

Others often mentioned in Nobel speculation include Antiguan-American author Jamaica Kincaid, Chinese writer Can Xue, Australia’s Gerald Murnane and Alexis Wright, Thomas Pynchon of the US and Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza.

Perhaps the most keenly anticipated award is that due on Oct 9, the peace prize – the only Nobel to be awarded in Oslo.

For 2026, some experts have suggested the jury could choose a laureate who enjoys broad consensus, after the 2025 winner, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, stirred controversy.

US President Donald Trump lobbied intensively in 2025 to get the prize – Machado ended up giving him her Nobel medal – and the committee is aware he will be watching closely again.

“There’s always a lot of lobbying, and ultimately perhaps also attempts to exert pressure on the committee,” the secretary of the Nobel Committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told AFP in an interview.

Among possible laureates in 2026 are a joint prize to Save the Children and Mykola Kuleba, a Ukrainian children’s rights activist campaigning for the return of Ukrainian children illegally taken to Russia from occupied territories.

Others include Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, a vast network of volunteers risking their lives to help people facing the double threat of war and hunger, and the Committee to Protect Journalists after the deadliest year on record for the profession in 2025.

The economics prize wraps up the Nobel season on Oct 12. AFP