Science Bytes
The Lizard, the Hormone, and the Drugs That Ate the World: A GLP-1 Explainer
19:17
How a desert lizard's venom became the best-selling medicines on Earth. We trace the science of GLP-1 receptor agonists from 1990 — when endocrinologist John Eng isolated exendin-4 from Gila monster venom, a hormone that mimics human GLP-1 but lasts hours instead of two minutes — through the drug lineage it spawned: exenatide (Byetta), liraglutide, semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy), the dual…