The father of Ozempic

When it comes to diabetes drugs, there’s just something about Toronto researchers. In 1984, 63 years after Banting and Best isolated insulin, Daniel Drucker, another U of T alumnus, co-discovered glucagon-like peptide-1, a.k.a. GLP-1, a gut hormone that lowers blood sugar and suppresses appetite. Drucker’s eureka moment was exciting in endocrinology circles. But it wasn’t until decades later, when a GLP-1-mimicking drug called semaglutide proved effective for weight loss, that their work became the foundation for Ozempic, the shot taken ’round the world.

The ripples of the “Ozempic effect” are now unfathomably huge: an expanding suite of GLP-1 drugs (Wegovy, Mounjaro and Rybelsus), a soon-to-be $100-billion industry, so many op-eds about our screwed-up body politics, witch hunts around celebrity users and, on a more serious note, widespread shortages that are expected to last through 2024. Drucker is today a senior scientist at Toronto’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and a Canadian Medical Hall of Famer. I spoke with him recently for Maclean’s about his seminal research, Ozempic mania and what he’s working on now.

—Katie Underwood, Maclean’s managing editor

Over a million Canadians struggle with neurological ailments like dementia, Parkinson’s and epilepsy. One solution? Neurochips. University of Calgary neuroscience researcher Naweed Syed designed the world’s first neurochip 20 years ago, and now even Elon Musk is touting the technology's potential. In this essay for Maclean’s, Syed explains how neurochips hold the potential to repair damaged brains—and so much more.

Essential workers—paramedics, teachers, nurses, daycare workers, firefighters—are the backbone of our country. But their wages can’t keep up with runaway housing costs in the cities they serve. The fix? To help front-line workers stay in our communities, writes journalist Gregor Craigie, we need to subsidize their housing.

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