2025 Recipient
The recipient of the 2025 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research was honored for his discovery of the hormone leptin, which established a biological basis for obesity, led to a life-saving treatment for people with lipodystrophy, and opened the era of molecular exploration in the field of obesity research.
The Albany Prize is made possible by the Marty and Dorothy Silverman Foundation
Jeffrey M. Friedman, MD, PhD
Marilyn M. Simpson Professor
Laboratory of Molecular Genetics
The Rockefeller University
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman is the Marilyn M. Simpson Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at The Rockefeller University, as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His discovery of the hormone leptin has transformed our understanding of the causes of obesity and provided new treatments for several human disorders. Dr. Friedman’s work has provided strong evidence that obesity has a profound biologic basis and is not simply due to a lack of willpower.
Dr. Friedman received his undergraduate degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his medical degree from Albany Medical College, where he also completed his training in internal medicine. He then joined the graduate program at Rockefeller, where he received his doctoral degree. Dr. Friedman is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous awards, including the Shaw Prize in 2005, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2010, the Wolf Prize in 2019, and the Breakthrough Prize in 2020.
Dr. Friedman’s 1994 discovery of leptin, and the characterization of its receptor in the brain, shed new light on the pathogenesis of obesity. He and his colleagues later showed that leptin acts on sets of neurons in brain centers that regulate food intake and energy expenditure, and has powerful effects on reproduction, metabolism, other endocrine systems, and immune function.
In studies of genetically obese mice, Dr. Friedman established that leptin deficiency is associated with severe obesity; mice that do not produce leptin are up to three times their normal weight. Dr. Friedman’s experiments have also shown that injecting leptin-deficient mice with the hormone increases their level of activity and decreases their weight. Similar results have been obtained in humans with leptin deficiency, and leptin has successfully been used to treat lipodystrophy, a disease in which fat cells do not develop normally.
In his current research, he seeks to understand the neural mechanisms that control appetite and other innate behaviors.
