Date: August 17, 2020

Omar Hussain, Product Specialist at Don Whitley Scientific, provides a synopsis of a paper by Dr Sophie Cowman et al, University of Utah. Their research looked at clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), which is frequently associated with inactivation of the von Hippel Lindau tumour suppressor, resulting in activation of HIF-1α and HIF-2α. The current paradigm, established using mechanistic cell-based studies, supports a tumour promoting role for HIF-2α, and a tumour suppressor role for HIF-1α. The paper is entitled:
“Macrophage HIF-1α is an independent prognostic indicator in kidney cancer”
This is something that has not been comprehensively studied before and was carried out by assessing the involvement of hypoxia associated factors/hypoxia inducible factors and their relationship to tumour grade/stage/outcome using tissue from 380 patients.
Read more: Kidney Cancer Study at the University of Utah
By: Katherine Ellen Foley
October 7, 2019
Click here to read the original article at www.msn.com
This year’s Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to three scientists whose work focused on understanding how our cells take in various levels of oxygen.
This fundamental process is key to embryonic development, adapting to high altitude, and exercising. The Nobel Assembly based at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which made the announcement early on the morning of Oct. 7, also noted that the process plays a role in developing treatments for anemia, a common blood disorder in which there aren’t enough red blood cells able to carry oxygen to different tissues in the body, along with various type of cancers.
The winners of the prize—William Kaelin Jr., currently at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland; Sir Peter Ratcliffe, currently at the University of Oxford and Francis Crick Institute in London; and Gregg Semenza, currently at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland—will split the prize money, worth just over $9 million, equally. Want to understand why their work is important? Take a deep breath, and get ready to dive in.
Every one of your trillions of cells—and really, all animal cells everywhere on the planet—use oxygen from the air to turn food into usable energy.
Read more: Hypoxia researchers win the 2019 Nobel Prize in medicine