Medical student Anthony Wong received a People’s Choice recognition in the 2025 AMA Research Challenge for his work on using augmented intelligence (AI)—also commonly called artificial intelligence—to design type 2 diabetes and obesity medications that better target the hormone receptors controlling blood sugar and body weight.
“Our research tackles one of the biggest challenges in drug discovery by designing medications that can hit multiple targets at once to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity more effectively,” Wong said of the poster, “Machine Learning-Guided Design of Next-Generation Triple Agonist Peptide Therapeutics for Metabolic Disease” (PDF). “This computational approach accelerates what would take years of trial-and-error lab work, helping researchers prioritize which molecules to test experimentally.”
The work received the Innovative Research Award, intended “for the finalist who brings fresh ideas to the table—creative thinking, new approaches and research that moves the field forward.”
Wong said the project’s success was due in no small part to the efforts of his research team and fellow authors, Sanskruthi Guduri; Tsungyen Chen, MD, and Kunal Patel, MD.
Wong, a fourth-year medical student at Carle Illinois Medical School in Urbana, Illinois, is planning to pursue residency training in internal medicine. The Innovative Research Award is one of the People’s Choice recognitions given to finalists in the AMA Research Challenge. Wong joined grand prize winner Addison Shenk, as well as fellow finalists Bijoya Basu; Tiffany Bellomo, MD, and Karishma Popli, MD, MBE, in being recognized.
AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, MD, called the entire slate of finalists “an extraordinary group whose work represents the innovative thinking that moves medicine forward.”
For medical students, residents and international medical graduates looking to hone their research skills, the AMA offers resources and programs that bring you from the basics all the way to the AMA Research Challenge, where you too can compete for the People’s Choice recognitions and a $10,000 prize presented by Laurel Road, a brand of KeyBank. The 2025 AMA Research Challenge Finals show is now available to watch, and the call for abstracts is now open for the 2026 AMA Research Challenge. The submission deadline is July 16.
Problems demand innovative solutions
As Wong noted in his poster, type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity continue to be among the most pervasive health challenges worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 36 million adults have type 2 diabetes in the U.S. The metabolic disorder was estimated to be responsible for one-quarter of all health care spending in 2021.
Meanwhile, a 2024 CDC data brief estimated that 40.3% of all U.S. adults had obesity, a condition that increases risks of stroke, coronary heart disease and some types of cancers.
The AMA provides physicians and health care organizations with tools and resources needed to define and implement evidence-based diabetes prevention and management strategies. One of those programs, AMA MAP™ Prediabetes Solutions, helps health care organizations stave off the metabolic disorder in their patients.
As glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists show promising health results for patients, researchers including Wong are seeking more and better medications to prevent and treat obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Wong said he has been interested for some time in the applications for AI in medicine, but he and Dr. Patel were particularly inspired by a scholarly article discussing AI approaches in drug discovery.
“Around the same time, new triple-agonist therapies for diabetes and obesity were just beginning to enter the clinical trials, and we recognized an opportunity to apply these computational methods to a very timely clinical problem,” Wong said in an interview with the AMA. “I was drawn to the project because it combined innovation in AI with real potential to improve treatments for conditions I see affecting patients.”
From AI implementation to digital health adoption and EHR usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors. That includes recently launching the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI to give physicians a powerful voice in shaping how AI and other digital tools are harnessed to improve the patient and clinician experience.
Research with long-term implications
In the work recognized with the 2025 AMA Research Challenge People’s Choice voting, Wong and his fellow researchers leveraged AI technology to help design drugs that can target three hormone receptors—GLP-1, glucagon and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP)—that affect blood sugar and body weight. They combined the use of a model that can capture the peptides’ 3D shape and chemical properties with genetic algorithms to create 20 new peptide sequences with promise to target the hormone receptors.
Wong said he hoped that the use of AI could cut down on the expense of developing new medications. The most exciting part of his research, he said, was “the moment when our model first started working successfully. When we saw it [the algorithm] pass validation testing with about 80% to 90% accuracy, it was a real ‘aha’ moment. At that point, I realized we had built something that could have real potential for drug discovery.”
He said he hopes to continue in academic medicine, finding ways to incorporate AI and other technological advances into his practice. Wong added that he was delighted to learn that his research was regarded so highly.
“I was honestly very surprised,” Wong said of learning his work had advanced to the final round of judging. “During the AMA Research Challenge, I saw so many impressive and high-quality projects, so being named a finalist was an honor. Receiving the Innovative Research Award made me feel very proud, especially right now when I reflect on how much collaboration went into the project to get us to that point. It’s really rewarding to see our efforts and the innovative aspect of our research recognized.”
Learn more with the AMA about how to get started in research as a medical student.
