Eventually it may be a contributor to a commercialization, but now it makes it a target for research for others. This isn't patenting anything, it's scientists saying 'this is an important bit when it comes to the effects of fasting so let's focus on this.'

What would be scummy would be some pharmaceutical company discovering this, not releasing the information, and trying to develop (or worse, failing to develop) a drug on their own after internal research that was never released to the world.