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The Lizard Behind Ozempic, Middle school

A Gila monster, a lizard with beaded black and orange scales, at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona

The Gila monster is a big orange and black lizard with a venomous bite. Its venom holds a molecule that works like a hormone your body makes after you eat.

Could a molecule from lizard venom lead to a medicine for people?

Ozempic exists because of a LIZARD!

The Gila monster is a big orange and black lizard with a venomous bite. A scientist found a molecule in its venom that works like a hormone your body makes after you eat, and the lizard molecule lasts for hours instead of minutes. That molecule led to exenatide, a new kind of medicine for high blood sugar, in 2005. Exenatide paved the way for medicines like Ozempic.

A digital thermostat on a wall, showing a temperature setting in Celsius
A peninsula is land with water almost all the way around. Peninsula comes from Latin paen-, “almost,” and insula, “island.”

Your word of the day is

IN-suh-lin

insul-islandfrom Latin insula
-inan ending for names of chemicalsfrom New Latin -ina

A hormone made in the pancreas that helps the body’s cells take in sugar from the blood.

A dinner of brown rice, beans, squash, mango and milk

After you eat, your gut makes a hormone called GLP-1, and GLP-1 signals your pancreas to release more insulin.

Why does your body release more insulin after you eat?

Video of gloved hands holding a blood glucose meter that reads 121 mg/dL

Your body breaks down GLP-1 in about 2 minutes.

Why would a GLP-1 signal that shuts off within a few minutes help your body?

A reticulate Gila monster, with a net-like pattern of black and orange scales

Exendin-4, a molecule from Gila monster venom, works like GLP-1 but lasts for hours instead of minutes.

Why was a molecule that lasts for hours such a big deal for treating high blood sugar?

A pharmacist in gloves, seen from behind, sorting medicine on pharmacy shelves

Scientists made semaglutide, the medicine in Ozempic, by changing human GLP-1.

Ozempic didn’t come from a lizard. How did Gila monster research still help lead to Ozempic?

A Gila monster near Patagonia Lake in southern Arizona, its black and orange beaded skin in view

Exendin-4 lasts much longer than GLP-1. GLP-1 starts H, A, E, and exendin-4 starts H, G, E. The enzyme DPP-4 cuts quickly when the second building block is A.

What tiny difference between exendin-4 and GLP-1 makes exendin-4 last longer?

A Gila monster near Patagonia Lake in southern Arizona

Lesson complete

Today’s word

insulin

IN-suh-lin

A hormone that helps move sugar from your blood into your cells. Tiny islands of cells in your pancreas, called islets, make insulin.

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Sources
  1. John Eng, an endocrinologist at the Bronx VA Medical Center, with W. A. Kleinman, L. Singh, G. Singh and Jean-Pierre Raufman, Journal of Biological Chemistry, 1992
  2. R. Göke, H. C. Fehmann, T. Linn, H. Schmidt, M. Krause, John Eng and B. Göke, Journal of Biological Chemistry, 1993
  3. Y. E. Chen and D. J. Drucker, Journal of Biological Chemistry, 1997
  4. C. M. Christel and D. F. DeNardo, Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A, 2006
  5. R. Mentlein, B. Gallwitz and W. E. Schmidt, European Journal of Biochemistry, 1993
  6. C. F. Deacon, L. B. Knudsen, K. Madsen, F. C. Wiberg, O. Jacobsen and J. J. Holst, University of Copenhagen and Novo Nordisk, Diabetologia, 1998
  7. Reviews by Drucker, Habener and Holst, and by T. D. Müller and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2017 and Molecular Metabolism, 2019
  8. US Food and Drug Administration prescribing labels, Byetta label and Ozempic label
  9. Golden Goose Award, John Eng awardee page and 2013 announcement, for Eng’s work at the Bronx VA, the 1992 discovery and the path to Byetta
  10. Jake Currie, “How the Gila Monster Gave the World Ozempic,” Nautilus, 2026, for Eng’s title as an endocrinologist
  11. Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Gila monster
  12. UniProt P01275, the human proglucagon sequence, for GLP-1’s first five amino acids
  13. Vision and Change core concepts and competencies, as summarized in Brownell and others, CBE Life Sciences Education, 2014
  14. Word origins from Dictionary.com: insulin, -in, insula, insular, homeostasis, homeo-, stasis, peninsula, hemostasis, hemo-, thermostat, insulate, homeomorphism, Gila monster
  15. Spanish, French and Italian spellings from Wiktionary: insula, insulin