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The best minds in science will be brought out of academic obscurity into the spotlight next week when the Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine are announced.
The awards, established more than a century ago by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, celebrate groundbreaking work that can take decades to complete.
It is notoriously difficult to predict who will win science's highest honors. The shortlist and nominators remain secret, and documents revealing the details of the selection process remain hidden from the public for fifty years.
There's no shortage of Nobel Prize-worthy discoveries, though: here are five breakthroughs that haven't resulted in a life-changing call from Stockholm - at least not yet.
The first human genome
A frequently discussed candidate for the Nobel Prize is the mapping of the human genome, a daring project that started 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, Britain, 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 this feat.
Under rules set out by Nobel in his 1895 will, the prizes can honor only three people per award - a growing challenge given the collaborative nature of much scientific research.
A revolution in the treatment of obesity
The development of blockbuster weight loss drugs that mimic a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1, has shaken the healthcare world in recent years.
One in eight people in the world are obese - a figure that has more than doubled since 1990 - and the drug, which lowers blood sugar levels and curbs appetite, has the potential to herald a new era in treatment of obesity and related conditions such as type 2 diabetes.
Three scientists - Svetlana Mojsov, Dr. Joel Habener and Lotte Bjerre Knudsen - who were involved in the development of the drug known as semaglutide, won the 2024 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, which is often considered an indicator of whether a specific breakthrough or scientist will do. win a Nobel Prize.
Mojsov, a biochemist and associate 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 advisor for research and early development at Novo Nordisk, played a crucial role in turning it into an effective weight loss drug that millions of people use today.
Transformative AI
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is transforming people's lives at an unprecedented pace.
It's a crowded field, but two names stand out, according to David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate's Institute for Scientific Information. Pendlebury identifies "Noble" individuals by analyzing how often fellow scientists cite their most important scientific papers over the years.
The two key figures are Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, the Google DeepMind inventors of the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database - an AI program that decodes the 3D structures of proteins from amino acid sequences that at least 2 million researchers around the world have used.
AlphaFold acts as a "Google search" for protein structures and provides instant access to predicted models of proteins, accelerating progress in fundamental biology and other related fields.
Since the pair's seminal article was published in 2021, it has been cited more than 13,000 times, which Pendlebury described as an "exceptional number." Of the total 61 million scientific articles, only about 500 have been cited more than 10,000 times, he said.
Jumper and Hassabis already won the Lasker and Breakthrough prizes in 2023. A Nobel Prize in chemistry may be in their future, said Pendlebury, along with a third researcher, David Baker, director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who laid the groundwork for AlphaFold.
But it could be premature for the typically conservative Nobel Committee to honor this field, Pendlebury said.
"Some people have suggested that it may be too early for such an award, that the work is too recent and that this is a completely new area, the application of AI to scientific research," he said.
Understanding the gut microbiome
We are not alone in our bodies. Trillions of microbes - bacteria, viruses and fungi - live on and in the human body, collectively known as the human microbiome.
Thanks to advances in genetic sequencing over the past two decades, scientists have been better able to understand what these microbes do, how they talk to each other and interact with human cells, especially in the gut.
The field has been waiting far too long for Nobel Prize 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 this field.
Gordon sought to understand the human gut microbiome and how it affects human health, starting with laboratory studies in mice. He led research showing that the gut microbiome plays a role in the health effects of malnutrition, which affects nearly 200 million children worldwide, and he is developing food interventions aimed at improving gut health.
Cancer-causing genes
In the 1970s it was understood that cancer sometimes ran in families, but mainstream thinking about breast cancer did not take into account any hereditary susceptibility to the disease.
With a background in research into the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees, Mary-Claire King, now a professor of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, took a fresh approach.
Long before scientists had any map of the human genome, King spent seventeen years detecting and identifying the role a mutation of the BRCA1 gene played in breast and ovarian cancer.
The discovery has made possible genetic testing that can identify women at risk for breast cancer and what steps they should take to reduce their risk, such as additional screening and preventive surgeries.
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.For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com
