AUHS Students Receive International Recognition
By Oksana Zayachkivska, MD, PhD, DSc, Professor, School of Medicine & School of Pharmacy
The meaning of life is to give life meaning. These words of Viktor Frankl reflect recent activities of the participation of SOP and SON students in the “Physiology Week 2025,” organized by the Physiological Society of the UK (one of the oldest scientific societies in the world) and calling for worldwide participation. Since I am a member (‘representative’) of this society and am teaching the Integrative Endocrine and Gastrointestinal diseases course of SOP, I offered students to prepare short presentations on GLP-1 agonists, which are the new, very popular drugs for the treatment of diabetes mellitus and weight loss. It was part of active learning when instructors of this course, Sandor Szabo, MD, PhD, DSc; Suhui Yang, PhD, MS, and Rose Bagheri, PharmD, translated lecture material into real-world applications and showed the importance of understanding how physiological changes are affected by GLP-1 agonists in pharmacotherapy. Seven students, six SOP and one SON, took up the offer and made very impressive, 10-minute presentations in our course on November 17, 2025.
Since I am a representative of the Physiological Society of the U.K., I needed to submit a report to London with the list of student participants. Surprisingly, we received individual certificates, signed by the Oxford-educated president of the Physiological Society. Our students are recognized as physiology activists who will lead future healthcare toward physiology as a part of therapy and wellbeing.
This is another example that AUHS is on the ‘global map of science’, consistent with the goals of AUHS schools: from local to global engagements. We are very proud that we made a small contribution, thanks in part to the Physiological Society of U.K.
References
- Zayachkivska O., et al. What role will physiological resilience play in brown-white fat dynamic in obesity management? Frontiers in Pharmacology. Dec 9, 2025; DOI 10.3389/fphar.2025.1691149
- Celletti F, Farrar J, De Regil L. World Health Organization guideline on the use and indications of glucagon-like peptide-1 therapies for the treatment of obesity in adults. JAMA. 2025.
- The Physiology Week 2025 website: https://www.physoc.org/physiologyweek/
