Nobel Prize gives the study of cell hypoxia its ‘whoo hooo’ moment
On the morning of 7 October, I woke up with the message from a colleague saying: “HIF got the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine whoo hooo.”
That’s exciting news for young researchers like me who are beginning our careers studying hypoxia, when the levels of oxygen are low in the cells.
If you are wondering what on Earth that means, HIF, or hypoxia-inducible factor, is a protein that increases inside the cell when the oxygen levels fall, helping the cell survive.
The recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine are William G. Kaelin of Harvard Medical School, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe of Oxford University and Gregg L. Semenza of Johns Hopkins University.
