Three scientists who discovered how cells sense and adapt to the availability of oxygen have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. William Kaelin Jr of Harvard Medical School, US; Peter Ratcliffe of the University of Oxford, UK; and Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University, US identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen, discoveries that paved the way for new strategies to treat anaemia, cancer and many other diseases.
