(by Nicola Simonetti) William G. Kaelin, American 62 years, Peter J.Ra-tcliffe, English (n. 1954) and Gregg L. Semenza, American (n. 1956), have seen their research on “how to cells detect and adapt to the availability of oxygen ".
Oxygen says "I am as you want me" to the cells of the body and they use it to live. Otherwise, for them, it would be death. But how cell and oxygen are meant, how does their "conversation" work in the context of the organism and its activity?
"The fundamental importance of oxygen - says the motivation of the Nobel Prize - has been known for centuries, the way in which cells adapt to changes in oxygen levels has remained mysterious for a long time".
The awarded researches have discovered the ubiquitous presence of "sensors" (sentinels to detect the concentration of existing oxygen) and shed light on how, for example, it occurs in hypoxic conditions (partial oxygen deficiency) as in high mountain verification where there is rarefied air, or during or after a physical endurance commitment (sport, work) which causes the muscles to go haywire ("oxygen debt", the body hurries or makes available and / or produces more blood cells reds which, thus, would absorb more oxygen which, by binding with hemoglobin, would transport it and make it usable from the wall of the tissues in deficiency.
The Nobels have also brought light to the pathology.
For example, in subjects with chronic renal failure who undergo easy anemia because they lack erythropoietin (EPO, a hormone produced by the kidneys and to a lesser extent by the liver and brain, whose main function is the regulation of erythropoiesis, i.e. of red blood cells from the bone marrow).
A beacon also towards tumors, avid consumers of a considerable quantity of oxygen to support their high metabolism, to develop and live and that, to do so, new blood vessels are made (neoangiogenesis). The decisive device would be to prevent the tumor from making them and starving them, which they try to do some anticancer therapeutic strategies.
The heterogeneous system involves a complex connected and interacting complex of enzymes, hormones, genes that the three winners have investigated and whose knowledge could represent the way to kill the tumor "by starvation". They identified the mechanisms that at the molecular level regulate the activity of genes (which encode proteins) depending on the oxygen levels available to cells.