Nobel Prize for cell response to oxygen, a two-sided therapeutic target

Cellular responses to oxygen levels, the focus of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, are the targets of both inhibiting and activating therapies in clinical development for multiple diseases.

William Kaelin, Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza share the award for their discoveries of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF); its activation during hypoxia to trigger erythropoiesis and angiogenesis; and the molecular mechanisms controlling the activity of HIF, a complex containing two transcription factors, HIF1A and ARNT...