The story

In the 1990s Frank Ng and his team at Monash University in Melbourne mapped which part of growth hormone made fat cells release fat. They traced it to the far end of the molecule and built a stable synthetic version, AOD9604, published in 2000. Australian work with Metabolic Pharmaceuticals and Monash, led by Mark Heffernan, showed in 2001 that it cut fat and raised fat burning in obese mice without the side effects of whole growth hormone. It was carried into people as a daily oral tablet. In 2015 Dong Rak Kwon and Gi-Young Park in Daegu, South Korea, opened a second use, showing better cartilage repair when it was injected into damaged knees.