Professor Jeffrey Friedman (centre) receives the
UCL Prize Lecture in Clinical Science Medal from
UCL President and Provost, Professor Malcolm
Grant (right), and Professor Tony Segal.

Written by guest blogger, Marianne Neary, MBPhD student

Yesterday  a group of UCL MB PhD students met Professor Jeffrey Friedman for afternoon tea in the Wilkins Terrace restaurant.  We were granted the honour of a private audience before his UCL Prize Lecture in Clinical Science.

In 1994 Professor Friedman, and his colleagues at the Rockefeller in New York, made a landmark discovery which armed obesity researchers with a new weapon in the battle against widening waistlines and burgeoning bum-prints.

It saw the dawn of obesity genetics as Professor Friedman and his team identified the ‘obese’ (ob) gene in mice and humans. This gene codes for a hormone he later named leptin.

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