William G. Kaelin Jr.
Cancer researcher who worked out how cells sense oxygen through the VHL and HIF proteins, work recognised by the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School · Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator (since 1998) · Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2019
Kaelin Lab, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) ↗
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons (UNIST)
William Kaelin is a physician-scientist who studies how mutations in tumour-suppressor genes cause cancer. His work on the VHL protein helped reveal how cells sense oxygen, and it led to drugs for kidney cancer. He shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza.
The study in the Atlas, published in 2004 with James Brugarolas as first author, asked how low oxygen (hypoxia) turns mTOR down. The team found that this needs the TSC1/TSC2 complex and a hypoxia-inducible gene called REDD1. Cells lacking REDD1 or TSC2 failed to shut mTOR off under low oxygen, unlike the energy-stress route, which uses AMPK.
This linked the oxygen-sensing field to the mTOR field. It also suggested a reason tumours lacking TSC2 can keep growing in oxygen-poor regions.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2004 | M | Regulation of mTOR function in response to hypoxia by REDD1 and the TSC1/TSC2 tumor suppressor complex BRU2004 Senior author: low oxygen inhibits mTOR through REDD1 and the TSC1/TSC2 complex, independently of AMPK and LKB1. |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with William G. Kaelin Jr..
- James Brugarolas First author of the 2004 study showing that hypoxia switches off mTOR through REDD1 and the TSC1/TSC2 complex; now directs a kidney cancer research program studying signalling and resistance to targeted drugs.
Every researcher with a profile →
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