5 Nobel-worthy scientific advances that haven’t won the prize

Chemists (from left) Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman and biophysicist Pascal Mayer stand onstage at the Ninth Breakthrough Prize ceremony in April 2023 in Los Angeles. (Araya Doheny/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

It’s the time of year when leading scientists might not want to let any calls go to voicemail.

Prizes in chemistry, physics, and physiology or medicine, established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago, will be announced this week, along with prizes in peace and literature.

The awards are a pinnacle of scientific achievement. But predicting who will win is largely guesswork.

The short list and nominators remain a secret, and documents revealing the details of the selection process for the accolades are sealed from public view for 50 years.

There is, however, no shortage of worthy scientific advances from which the Nobel Prize committees can pick. Here are five life-changing breakthroughs and discoveries that experts think are Nobel-worthy.

Groundbreaking treatments for obesity

The development of blockbuster type-2 diabetes and weight-loss drugs that mimic a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1, has shaken up the world of health care.

One in 8 people in the world live with obesity — a figure that has more than doubled since 1990 — and the medication, which lowers blood sugar and curbs appetite, has the potential to usher in a new era for obesity treatment and related conditions such as type 2 diabetes.

Three scientists — Svetlana Mojsov, Dr. Joel Habener and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen — involved in the development of the drug, known as semaglutide, won the 2024 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, often considered an indicator of whether a specific breakthrough or scientist will win a Nobel Prize.

Mojsov, a biochemist and associate research professor at Rockefeller University, and Habener, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, helped identify and synthesize GLP-1. Knudsen, chief scientific adviser in research and early development at Novo Nordisk, played a pivotal role in turning it into an effective drug promoting weight loss that millions of people take today.

The same three scientists, along with Dr. Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist and professor at the University of Toronto, and Danish physician Dr. Jens Juul Holst, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, were awarded the Breakthrough Prize, founded by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg and others, in life sciences in April.

Quantum computing pioneers

Quantum computing is an emerging field that is ripe for some Nobel recognition, according to David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information.

Pendlebury identifies “Nobel-worthy” individuals by analyzing how often fellow scientists cite their key scientific papers throughout the years.

This year, he tipped two physicists for their work on quantum bits, or qubits, the basic unit of information used to encode data in quantum computing: David P. DiVincenzo, a professor at the Institute for Quantum Information at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, and Daniel Loss, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

“There’s certainly, of course, a lot of anticipation of quantum computing, and probably, for that matter, a lot of hype, but I went back to these extremely highly cited papers, and I think this one by DiVincenzo and Loss was cited almost 10,000 times, an astronomical number,” Pendlebury said, referring to a 1998 study in the journal Physical Review A. “Their insight was to use qubits as the fundamental mechanism of making a quantum computer.”

Other pioneers in the field include David Deutsch, a visiting professor of physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation at the UK’s University of Oxford, who shared the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics.

Finding a treatment for cystic fibrosis

Two years ago, the Make-A-Wish Foundation announced that the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis was no longer automatically a qualifying condition for the children with fatal diseases it seeks to help.

That’s largely because of life-changing advances in how the disease is treated that three scientists helped to pioneer. The disease causes an overabundance of mucus, trapping infections and blocking airways in the lungs.

Dr. Michael J. Welsh, a professor of internal medicine-pulmonary, critical care and occupational medicine at the University of Iowa, revealed how the protein that underlies this lethal genetic disease functions and what can go wrong with it in people with the illness.

This discovery allowed two other researchers to find ways to correct the misbehaving protein that culminated in a drug combination that has turned cystic fibrosis into a manageable condition. Jesús (Tito) González, a physical organic chemist formerly at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, pioneered a system used to screen for promising compounds, and cell biologist Paul Negulescu, who works at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, led and championed the research, according to a statement from the Lasker Foundation.

The trio won the 2025 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in September.

Understanding the gut microbiome

Trillions of microbes — bacteria, viruses and fungi — live on and in the human body, collectively known as the human microbiome.

With advances in genetic sequencing in the past two decades, scientists have been better able to understand what these microbes do and how they talk to one another and interact with human cells, particularly in the gut.

The field is another one long overdue for Nobel recognition, Pendlebury said.

Biologist Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is a pioneer in the field.

Gordon strove to understand the human gut microbiome and how it shapes human health, starting with lab research in mice. He led work that found that the gut microbiome plays a role in the health effects of undernutrition, which affects almost 200 million children globally, and he is developing food interventions that target improved gut health.

Next-generation DNA sequencing

One often discussed candidate for the Nobel Prize is the mapping of the human genome, an audacious project that launched in 1990 and was completed in 2003. Cracking the genetic code of human life involved an international consortium of thousands of researchers in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan and China.

The endeavor has had a far-reaching impact on biology, medicine and many other fields. But one reason the project may not have earned a Nobel Prize is the sheer number of people involved in the feat. According to the rules laid down by Nobel in his 1895 will, the prizes can only honor up to three people per award — a growing challenge given the collaborative nature of much scientific research.

In the same vein, Pendlebury said it was possible that the Nobel committee might recognize the work of chemists Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman at the University of Cambridge in the UK and French biophysicist Pascal Mayer of the University of Strasbourg for their work on next-generation sequencing technologies that can decode millions of fragments of DNA at once.

Before their inventions, sequencing a full human genome could take months and cost millions of dollars. Today, the process can be completed within a day and for only a few hundred dollars.

This work has transformed many fields, including medicine, biology, ecology and forensics, and means that doctors can understand the genetic underpinning of disease more easily, leading to personalized medicine and other treatments, Pendlebury said.

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine will be announced on Monday, followed by the physics prize on Tuesday and the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday. The Nobel Prize for literature will be announced on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.