Now, Professor Ratcliffe, is to receive the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, for his work understanding the mechanisms by which cells sense and signal hypoxia (low oxygen levels). Hypoxia is an important component of many human diseases including cancer, heart disease, stroke, vascular disease, and anaemia.
A key success was defining the oxygen sensing and signalling pathways that link the essential transcription factor, hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) to the availability of oxygen.
The award has been jointly awarded to William G. Kaelin of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School, and Gregg L. Semenza, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who worked with Professor Ratcliffe to understand the processes.
The full story is available on the University of Oxford website