Discovery of hypoxia-inducible factors

The discovery of hypoxia-inducible factors is the finding of a family of transcription factors through which cells sense and respond to low oxygen. The HIF transcriptional complex was identified in 1995 by Gregg Semenza and his postdoctoral fellow Guang Wang, who showed that it switches on genes when oxygen is scarce, including genes for glycolysis enzymes and for vascular endothelial growth factor, which promotes the growth of new blood vessels. HIF-1 is stabilised under hypoxic conditions and binds hypoxia-responsive elements in gene promoters. The work of Semenza, William Kaelin and Peter Ratcliffe on how HIF senses oxygen was recognised with the 2016 Lasker Award and the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.