Appetite-suppressing hormone
The Lasker prize for basic research was awarded jointly to Canadian Douglas Coleman, 78, of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Jeffrey Friedman, 56, of Rockefeller University in New York. They are honoured for the discovery of the hormone leptin, which helps regulate appetite and body weight.
In the 1970s, Coleman, who was born in Ontario and obtained his bachelor's degree at McMaster University in Hamilton, showed that mice have some sort of appetite-suppressing substance in the blood.
Friedman identified the substance in 1994 and named it leptin. People have leptin too, and the research opened new avenues for exploring the biological basis of human obesity, the foundation said.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/09/21/obesity-blindness-lasker-awards.html#ixzz10BiJ0HSm
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