William Kaelin

Kaelin's Nobel-winning research centered on how cells sense oxygen through the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) pathway. He showed that the VHL tumor suppressor protein targets HIF-1α for degradation under normal oxygen conditions, linking a kidney cancer gene to oxygen sensing. This work, shared with Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza, earned the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Kaelin studied von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease, a genetic disorder that causes tumors in organs like the kidneys and adrenal glands. By investigating how mutations in the VHL gene disrupt the cell's oxygen-sensing machinery, his research helped explain tumor formation in kidney cancer. The HIF pathway he helped characterize is now a target for drugs like belzutifan, approved for VHL-associated tumors.

Kaelin is a professor at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He runs the Kaelin Laboratory at Dana-Farber, where his team continues to study tumor suppressor genes and oxygen-regulated pathways relevant to cancer therapy.

No, Kaelin shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Peter Ratcliffe of Oxford University and Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University. The three independently mapped how cells adapt to oxygen availability, with Kaelin's VHL work, Ratcliffe's EPO regulation studies, and Semenza's discovery of HIF-1 each contributing a piece of the puzzle.