On October 7, 2019, at approximately 17:30 Beijing time, American oncologist William G. Kaelin Jr. and British clinical physician Peter J. Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and American clinician Gregg L. Semenza won the 2019 Medal for their discovery of the mechanism by which cells sense and adapt to changes in oxygen availability. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
2019 Nobel Prize Winners in Physiology or Medicine: William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and American Medicine Home Gregg L. Semenza
William G. Kaelin Jr. William George Kelling, Jr. was an American oncologist and professor at Harvard Medical School. He was born in New York, USA, in 1957. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Duke University in 1979 and a doctorate in medicine from Duke University in 1982. In 1998, Kaelin became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Currently, Kaelin is the associate director of the Department of Basic Sciences at the Dana-Farber Institute of Harvard Medical School and a senior physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Kaelin’s work has contributed to the understanding of cell signaling involved in cancer development. His team's research subjects include retinoblastoma, von Hippel-Lindau syndrome (von Hippel-Lindau, VHL), and the tumor suppressor genes RB-1 and p53. Hippel-Lindau syndrome is caused by mutations in the VHL tumor suppressor gene located on the short arm of chromosome 3 (3P25-26). Kaelin discovered that the VHL protein inhibits it by participating in the labeling of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF): if there is insufficient oxygen, HIF is less hydroxylated and therefore cannot be properly labeled by the VHL protein, thereby initiating the growth of blood vessels.
In 2010, Kaelin was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and received the Gairdner International Award; in 2016, Kaelin received the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. Currently, Kaelin's research interests focus on understanding the impact of mutations in tumor suppressor genes on tumorigenesis, that is, why mutations affecting tumor suppressor genes lead to cancer. Kaelin hopes his work could lay the foundation for new anti-cancer therapies based on the biochemical functions of specific tumor suppressor proteins.
Peter J. Ratcliffe studied at Cambridge University and St Bartholomew's Hospital, and later studied renal circulation physiology at Oxford University. He then began studying the blood-forming growth factor erythropoietin, which is produced by the kidneys in response to falling blood oxygen levels. In 1990, as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, he established the Hypoxia Biology laboratory at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. This work opened the door to the discovery of an oxygen-sensing process that not only determines how the kidneys and liver regulate erythropoietin levels, but is present in nearly all animal cells, regardless of whether the cells produce erythropoietin. This process dominates numerous cellular and systemic processes in response to hypoxia.
Ratcliffe was elected to the Royal Society and the British Academy of Medical Sciences in 2002. He is also a member of the European Molecular Biology Association (EMBO) and an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). His work on oxygen sensing has received multiple awards, including the 2016 Lasker Award.
He has been Director of Clinical Research at the Francis Crick Institute since May 2016. He is also a member of the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and Director of the Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford .