Nobel Medicine research fuels drug efforts

Abstract

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine often goes to those whose research has inspired or is on the cusp of spawning therapeutics, and the 2019 prize is no exception. Gregg L. Semenza, one of the three 2019 Nobel laureates, tells C&EN that pharmaceutical and biotech firms are eagerly developing medicines that target different parts of this oxygen-sensing mechanism for diseases like cancer and anemia. In 1991, Semenza, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University, discovered that a transcription factor called HIF-1α could bind DNA and boost the production of blood. Colleagues and colaureates Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and William G. Kaelin Jr. discovered how enzymes called prolyl hydroxylases work with other proteins to destroy HIF-1α in the presence of oxygen. Cancer cells hijack this mechanism to support their growth. But HIF-1α is a challenging drug target, since transcription factors do not always have obvious places for small molecules to dock.Since