Academy Fellow, Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe FMedSci, has been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Professor William Kaelin Jr and Professor Gregg Semenza "for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability."
Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe was elected to The Academy of Medical Sciences in 2002. He is the Director of Clinical Research at Francis Crick Institute, London, Director for Target Discovery Institute in Oxford and Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.
The Academy is delighted to welcome Peter to the ranks of Fellows who are Nobel Laureates, which includes Paul Nurse, Richard Henderson, Gregory Winter, Martin Evans, John Gurdon, Venki Ramakrishnan, Sydney Brenner, Elizabeth Blackburn, Tim Hunt, Peter Doherty, Aaron Klug, John Sulston and John Walker.
On the news of this prestigious win, Professor Sir Robert Lechler PMedSci, President of The Academy of Medical Sciences, said:
“I am thrilled to hear the great news that our Fellow Peter Ratcliffe has jointly won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
“Peter’s ground-breaking work has unlocked one of human biology’s big mysteries: how our cells adapt to help us cope with changing oxygen levels. This mechanism is fundamental for human life and its discovery is already impacting on treatment of disease – supporting the development of promising experimental anaemia drugs and having the potential to better treat other diseases such as cancer.
“This win is a shining example of how the international collaboration of skilled and inquisitive minds can lead to major discoveries within the field of fundamental science. The UK punches above its weight on science, and this shows how high quality basic science can have incredible benefits for patients.”
Peter Ratcliffe’s Nobel Prize winning science: a summary
Animals need oxygen for the conversion of food into useful energy. The fundamental importance of oxygen has been understood for centuries, but how cells adapt to changes in levels of oxygen has long been unknown.
William G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza discovered how cells can sense and adapt to changing oxygen availability. They identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen.
The seminal discoveries by this year’s Nobel Laureates revealed the mechanism for one of life’s most essential adaptive processes. They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function. Their discoveries have also paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anemia, cancer and many other diseases.
This summary was taken from the Nobel Prize website