Why I Chose Obesity For My PhD

Nadiia Wyttenbach shares why she chose to dedicate her PhD to tackling obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Reason 1.  From Stigma to Understanding

Nearly 17 years ago, I chose to pursue a PhD in Molecular Health focused on obesity and cardiometabolic disorder. It wasn’t the obvious path – obesity was under the radar, unlike today. Back then, obesity was treated as a willpower problem. Molecular health was underexplored - and that showed up in bad guidance (remember the era of “just eat fructose” in 1980s-1990s?).

It was clear, however, that obesity is a molecular health disorder. I wanted to shed light on one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized patient populations.

Reason 2. Oncology and Obesity: Shared Pathways

Another reason I decided to dedicate my time to obesity: oncology and obesity are deeply connected. High insulin activates many of the same pathways implicated in cancer - chronic signalling that breaks regulatory circuits over time.

Reason 3. Working with tools of the future

My focus became the molecular and digital machines that can help us understand and, in the future, treat obesity. Back then, I was already able to use RNA-based therapeutics, convolutional neural networks (CNNs), Omics, endonucleases/ CRISPR–Caspase 9 approaches to probe the switches that go wrong. This was 10-15 years before machine learning or RNA-based therapeutics gained attention.

When you stand at the edge of what we know, you start asking different questions. What you see in front of you is.... nothing. There are no answers. You need to find them out. To advance human knowledge and help the patients. It`s a special feeling.

The sentence I will never forget

“For the first time in my life, I have a normal relationship with food.”  Patient testimony.

I first read that in a patient testimony years later, while already working in capital markets and reading clinical reports. It stopped me.

The sentence - “I sense satiety for the first time in my life” - captures why so many people in life sciences work: R&D, medical affairs, autoinjectors, sterile fill-and-finish, peptide manufacturing, payers, regulators, and yes, investors.

The collective work of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s laid the groundwork for today’s revolutionary therapies: GLP-1 receptor agonists (like semaglutide), dual GLP-1 receptor and incretin receptor agonists (such as tirzepatide), and next-generation combinations. We have shifted from blame to solutions.

Not every university program survived. Not every R&D study worked. Not every autoinjector innovation played out. Not every peptide synthesis approach worked. Yet, collectively, we moved forward. And look how far we have come!