By Gina Kolata and
The prize was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for discoveries about how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
By Gina Kolata and
The prize was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for discoveries about how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to three scientists — William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza — for their work on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
The Nobel Assembly announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Monday.
Their work established the genetic mechanisms that allow cells to respond to changes in oxygen levels. The findings have implications for treating a variety of diseases, including cancer, anemia, heart attacks and strokes.
Why did they win?
“Oxygen is the lifeblood of living organisms,” said Dr. George Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School. “Without oxygen, cells can’t survive.” But too much or too little oxygen also can be deadly. The three researchers tried to answer this question: How do cells regulate their responses?
The investigators uncovered detailed genetic responses to changing oxygen levels that allow cells in the bodies of humans and other animals sense and respond to fluctuations, increasing and decreasing how much oxygen they receive.
Why is the work important?
The discoveries reveal the cellular mechanisms that control such things as adaptation to high altitudes and how cancer cells manage to hijack oxygen. Randall Johnson, a member of the Nobel Assembly, described the work as a “textbook discovery” and said it would be something students would start learning at the most basic levels of biology education.
“This is a basic aspect of how a cell works, and I think from that standpoint alone it’s a very exciting thing,” Mr. Johnson said.
The research also has implications for treating various diseases in which oxygen is in short supply — including anemia, heart attacks and strokes — as well as for treatment of cancers that are fed by and seek out oxygen.
Who are the winners?
William G. Kaelin Jr., professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women’s Hospital Harvard Medical School, was drawn to science for its objectivity.
“Like any scientist, I like solving puzzles,” he said in an interview this morning.
But he had an unprepossessing start. When he was a pre-med student hoping to become a physician researcher, a professor wrote,