American, Brit researchers share Nobel medicine award

STOCKHOLM: Three researchers from the US and Britain yesterday shared the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability, paving the way for new cancer treatments, the Nobel Assembly said.

William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza of the US and Britain’s Peter Ratcliffe split the nine million Swedish kronor (27.8 million baht) award.

“They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function,” the jury said, adding that their research has “paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anaemia, cancer and many other diseases”.

The jury said the trio had identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen, which is central to a large number of diseases.

“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,” the jury said.

All animal cells use oxygen to convert food into usable energy.

“However, the amount of oxygen available to cells, tissues and animals themselves can vary greatly. This prize is for three physician-scientists who found the molecular switch that regulates how our cells adapt when oxygen levels drop,” Randall Johnson of the Nobel Assembly told reporters.

Mr Kaelin, 61, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US, while Mr Semenza, 63, is the director of the Vascular Research Program at the John Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering.

Mr Ratcliffe, 65, is the director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and director of the Target Discovery Institute in Oxford.

Yesterday’s announcement opened an unusual 2019 Nobel season in which two literature laureates will be crowned after a scandal postponed last year’s award.