Biography
Peter Ratcliffe trained as a nephrologist at the Oxford University Hospitals. After specialist clinical training he became interested in the regulation of the haematopoietic growth factor erythropoietin, which is produced by the kidneys in response to reduced blood oxygen availability.
This work led to the unexpected discovery that the oxygen sensing process underlying the regulation of erythropoietin production operates widely across human and animal cells to direct a broad range of homeostatic responses to hypoxia. The laboratory went on to elucidate the mechanism of ‘oxygen sensing’ by post-translational hydroxylation of specific amino acid residues within the key transcription factor, HIF (Hypoxia Inducible Factor) and showed that this process is catalysed by a series of ‘oxygen-sensing’ 2-oxoglutarate dependent dioxygenases.
Dr Ratcliffe has received numerous awards for this work including the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology, 2019. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2002 and Knighted for services to medicine in 2014. He served as Nuffield Professor and Head of Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford from 2004-2016. In 2016 he was appointed Director of Clinical Research at the Francis Crick Institute, London, retaining a position at Oxford as Distinguished Scholar at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.
Current interests encompass mechanistic understanding of rapid non-transcriptional responses to hypoxia, the physiological interplay between different hypoxia signalling pathways and the relationship of these pathways to cancer.