William G. Kaelin, Jr.

William G. Kaelin, Jr. (born 1957, New York City, New York) American scientist known for his studies of tumour suppressor genes and proteins and for his role in identifying the molecular mechanisms that allow cells to sense and adapt to changes in oxygen levels. His discoveries concerning cellular oxygen-sensing mechanisms earned him a share of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (shared with British physician and scientist Peter J. Ratcliffe and American physician and scientist Gregg L. Semenza).

Kaelin earned bachelor’s degrees (1979) in mathematics and chemistry from Duke University and subsequently attended medical school there, earning a medical degree in 1982. The following year, he began an internship and residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In 1987 Kaelin moved to Boston, where he served as a fellow in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and in 1991 became an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Kaelin remained at Harvard, later becoming a professor of medicine and serving as associate director of basic science at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. In 2018 he was made Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.

In 1992, when Kaelin set up his own research laboratory, he became interested in the gene underlying a rare familial cancer known as von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) syndrome, which is caused by mutations in the VHL gene. Persons with VHL develop tumours in different parts of the body, including the central nervous system, the kidneys, and the pancreas, usually beginning in young adulthood. Kaelin observed that tumour growth in VHL often was accompanied by increased blood vessel growth, which he suspected was linked to changes in oxygen availability to tumour tissue. He subsequently contributed, along with Ratcliffe, to the discovery that a chemical modification known as prolyl hydroxylation in the VHL protein facilitates cellular responses to changing oxygen availability. In the presence of oxygen, the modified VHL protein binds to another protein, known as hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), which stimulates cell proliferation when oxygen is scarce. At normal oxygen levels, VHL binding marks HIF protein for degradation. When oxygen availability is low, however, VHL no longer undergoes modification and therefore cannot bind to HIF, which allows HIF activation, and hence cell proliferation, to persist.

The realization that persistent HIF activity enables tumour cells to grow despite a lack of oxygen was critical to furthering scientists’ understanding of tumour growth and behaviour, since tumour cells, especially those deep within tumour masses, typically are starved of oxygen. The findings gave impetus to the development of anticancer drugs that block HIF activity; particularly successful were new treatments for kidney cancer. Kaelin also carried out research on other tumour suppressor proteins, including the retinoblastoma tumour suppressor protein, mutation of which contributes to retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer that arises in childhood,

In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize, Kaelin was the recipient of numerous other awards and honours throughout his career, including the Canada Gairdner International Award (2010) and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2016). He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1987) and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2010).