Wegovy does not contain venom.The active ingredient in Wegovy is semaglutide, which is a synthetic hormone that mimics a hormone found in the saliva of the Gila monster lizard. This hormone, called exendin-4, helps regulate blood sugar and appetite. Therefore, while Wegovy is inspired by a lizard’s venom, it does not contain any venom itself. It was seemingly an interesting biological finding … would never have conceived that there was any potential therapeutic benefit for anything,” he said. “To my recollection. I never tested it in human cells.” He continued his work with another researcher in New York, where they figured out the specific protein of the venom that triggered the pancreas. They found that this protein works like a hormone called GLP-1, which humans have, and which triggers the pancreas to release insulin. Endocrinologist Daniel Drucker at the University of Toronto heard about this discovery, because he was already interested in GLP-1, but did not understand why the gila monster would have something like that in its saliva. “Right away, there was a realization that something that stimulates insulin secretion could be used for the treatment of diabetes.”He said scientists at the time were trying to make a human diabetes treatment based on GLP-1, but it was difficult because humans would break down the hormone, or would get sick if they got too much of it too quickly. So once he heard about Raufman’s discovery, he shipped a live gila monster to Canada, then studied its venom and the genes behind the protein that works like GLP-1. Other researchers continued working on GLP-1 in humans in the 1990s and 2000s. Finally, in 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a GLP-1 therapy for diabetes, which later led to the blockbuster drug now known as Ozempic. “We didn’t know that GLP-1 would reduce appetite and be useful for weight loss,” Drucker said. “We didn’t know that GLP-1 would reduce heart attacks and strokes and improve metabolic liver disease and all of the things that GLP-1 does now.” Today, millions of people have prescriptions for GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. But to get to this point, it took a lot of basic science, which is focused on learning about the world. “We would often do experiments in animals and say, ‘hey, this would work,’ … and then the pharmaceutical or biotech companies would say,’ well, let’s try and develop drugs based on these findings,’” Drucker said. Raufman, who is now the chair of the gastroenterology department at the University of Maryland, said he is not sure if the National Institutes of Health would fund research like that today, because they now set a high bar for researchers to show that the work will likely help treat human disease. “This would be considered by NIH study sections and others as sort of a fishing expedition,” he said. “If you were a betting person, you’d probably bet that we’d end up with nothing.” “It’s very rare, frankly, that something goes this way and that frequently it’s a combination of luck, some intelligence, some foresight into doing the right experiments,” Raufman said. “Nobody knew where it would lead, and several of the participants are unfortunately now deceased. So (they) really haven’t seen what’s happened.