Discovery of how cells sense oxygen wins the 2019 medicine Nobel
Manipulating this molecular switch is being explored for cancer treatment
By Tina Hesman Saey, Aimee Cunningham and Jonathan Lambert
Updated
A trio of scientists has won the 2019 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their work on how cells sense and respond to oxygen.
Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, William Kaelin of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and Peter Ratcliffe of the Francis Crick Institute in London made discoveries relating to the HIF system, proteins that fine-tune cells’ response to oxygen. The three researchers will split the prize of 9 million Swedish kronor, or more than $900,000.
Like candles or furnaces, cells need oxygen to function correctly. If oxygen isn’t regulated properly, cells could die. The work has implications for nearly every aspect of physiology from metabolism to exercise, immunity, embryo development and the response to lack of oxygen at high altitudes, Nobel committee member Randall Johnson, noted during the announcement of the prize by the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on October 7. The HIF system plays a role in anemia, cancer, heart attack, stroke and other disorders.
“Cells literally and figuratively don’t live in a vacuum,” says Dennis Brown, a cell physiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. In fact, “life as we know it wouldn’t exist without oxygen,” he says. For many years, scientists understood that cells could adjust to differing levels of oxygen, but didn’t know how it was done until the three new laureates made their discoveries, says Brown, who is also the chief science officer for the American Physiological Society.