This piece is part of our first-annual Health Care Heroes series, where we spotlight people doing amazing things in the health care and medical fields. Read the rest of the stories here . IN 2002, NOVO Nordisk chemists Thomas Kruse and Jesper Lau were studying small molecules in the global pharmaceutical company’s Denmark lab (over 90 percent of marketed drugs are made from small molecules) when they got a call from their bosses. Novo Nordisk wanted to pivot research efforts into peptide chemistry with the goal of creating a long-acting GLP-1 receptor agonist—a class of drugs that mimic the natural GLP-1 hormone in our bodies. To Kruse, it felt like moving from carpentry to plumbing—two totally different trades—since the molecules are about 10 times bigger in peptide chemistry. After reluctantly joining the team full-time, he started working alongside Lau (the project lead) and laboratory technician Paw Bloch to create the next big GLP-1 receptor agonist.…