William G. Kaelin, Jr, MD
William G. Kaelin, Jr, MD, will receive a Distinguished Scientist Award from the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) on October 12, during the 2020 AACI/Cancer Center Administrators Forum Annual Meeting. Due to COVID-19–related restrictions on travel and gatherings, the meeting will take place in a virtual format.
Dr. Kaelin is the Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at -Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School as well as -Howard Hughes Medical Institute -Investigator. The AACI is recognizing Dr. Kaelin for his long-term research on how cells sense and adapt to changing oxygen levels.
Seminal Research
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Kaelin, Sir Peter J. -Ratcliffe, FRS, FMedSci, of Oxford University, and Gregg L. -Semenza, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Kaelin and his collaborators delineated the molecular events used by almost all multicellular animals to attune themselves to varying quantities of oxygen. These findings are leading to new therapeutics for disorders ranging from cancer to cardiovascular disease. For example, they provided the rationale for the development of drugs that inhibit the hypoxia-inducible transcription factor (HIF) or HIF-responsive growth factors such as vascular endothelial growth factor for kidney cancer.
