Nobel Prize for discovery of how cells sense oxygen

The award, announced by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) on Monday, is the 110th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901.

William Kaelin, Gregg Semenza and Peter Ratcliffe have won the Nobel Prize 2019 in medicine or physiology for their findings on how cells, the building blocks of life, sense oxygen levels and their response mechanism to inadequate supply of oxygen (a condition known as hypoxia).

Unknown till the late 1980s and 1990s, this understanding is the key to develop strategies to fight many diseases such as anaemia, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary hypertension, and cancer.(HT image)

Unknown till the late 1980s and 1990s, this understanding is the key to develop strategies to fight many diseases such as anaemia, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary hypertension, and cancer.

Kaelin and Semenza are from the US and Ratcliffe from the UK.

The award, announced by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) on Monday, is the 110th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901.

“They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function,” the jury said in a statement.

“Intense ongoing efforts in academic laboratories and pharmaceutical companies are now focused on developing drugs that can interfere with different disease states by either activating, or blocking, the oxygen-sensing machinery,” it added.

Cells are the basic structural, functional, and biological unit of all known organisms, and need a certain level of oxygen to function. Both excess or lack of oxygen can lead to irreversible cell damage and eventual death. How cells respond to oxygen levels had been an area of interest among researchers for long.

The jury said that the trio had identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen, often brought about by diseases. That response is key to things like producing red blood cells, generating new blood vessels, and fine tuning the immune system.

“Oxygen is the life of a cell. It is very important for the growth and regeneration of a cell,” said Dr IC Verma, senior consultant, institute of medical genetics and genomics, Ganga Ram Hospital.

Kaelin works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US, and Semenza is director of the Vascular Research Programme, Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering. Ratcliffe is director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and director of the Target Discovery Institute in Oxford.

The three received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2016 for these findings.

The Nobel Prize comprises a gold medal, a diploma and nine million Swedish kroner. The three will receive their prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.