Soon after the introduction of Epo into clinical nephrology, a young nephrologist in Oxford, Peter Ratcliffe, began to study the mechanisms by which hypoxia might control regulation of the Epo gene. This began a thirty year programme of work which lead to the unravelling of a fundamental biological mechanism , the mammalian response to hypoxia. For this work, Peter Ratcliffe (with two American scientists, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza) received the 2019 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology.

Watch Peter Ratcliffe’s  Nobel lecture

Read a fascinating  personal account of  the work by Chris Pugh, Peter Ratcliffe’s long term colleague and collaborator in Oxford

Last Updated on January 6, 2026 by neilturn