Defeating obesity takes cutting-edge science… and a bold purpose
Recognised as a disease by the World Health Organization, obesity is serious, progressive and chronic. It affects nearly one billion people worldwide.
We continue to learn more every day about the complexity and the science behind this disease. Researching how genes, metabolism and hormones work together is starting to show us why some people are more susceptible to obesity, and which factors increase the risk of developing obesity and its related complications.
Our mission
At Novo Nordisk, treating – and ultimately, preventing – obesity is central to our enduring purpose of driving change to defeat serious chronic diseases.
How do you defeat the obesity epidemic? You start by searching for solutions in places others don ’t think to look. Like the gut. In fact, for more than 30 years, Novo Nordisk has explored how native gut hormones communicate with the brain to regulate appetite.
Our pioneering discoveries produced today's breakthrough GLP-1 therapies and today we are relentlessly pursuing the next advances.
Today our scientists continue to study how synthetic GLP-1 molecules can be used to suppress appetite, increase energy expenditure and spur long-lasting weight loss. This research is leading to a broad portfolio of innovative solutions to support the long-term health of the growing number of people with obesity.
As part of our efforts, we engage the brightest scientific minds, wherever they are, because experience has shown us that asking unordinary questions is the key to unlocking surprising new solutions.
In addition to biological factors, many aspects of a person's general well-being, environment and lifestyle can also cause weight gain. Where a person lives and the culture that surrounds them can influence their risk of developing obesity.
Obesity puts people at risk of developing other diseases, too, including diabetes, heart and liver diseases, cancers and many more. In addition, people living with obesity frequently face stigma, discrimination and mental health problems.
To understand obesity, we must understand what is going on in our brains. It seems our bodies are hard-wired to hang on to those extra calories, probably because for thousands of years, it was a basic survival mechanism.
Therefore, people living with obesity struggle to lose weight. Their bodies programming works to get them back to their original starting weight. In the brain, it's as if there is a switch that tweaks a person’s energy expenditure until they have regained the lost kilos.
We are trying to pinpoint where exactly in the brain such a switch could be located and exploring whether it is something we could address with a medicine. So that one day, we might be able to help people with obesity to ‘reset’ their weight to a new, healthier starting point.
If we succeed, we could help millions of people living with obesity.
The World Obesity Atlas 2022, published by the World Obesity Federation, predicts that one billion people globally, including 1 in 5 women and 1 in 7 men, will be living with obesity by 2030.
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