This year at the Nobel prize for Medical, the winners have found the control for cellular level oxygen; this is huge!

Three Men have won the Nobel Prize in medicine for figuring out how cells sense, and then respond to oxygen. This is Huge, as it will open up many new a venues for treatment. Loss of oxygen (Ischemic) conditions cause a lot of tissue damage at a cellular level.

This damage could be reduced or eliminated by fooling those cells into drawing more oxygen. Diseases could be attacked by reducing their available oxygen too. Cancer tumors usually have poor vascularization so forcing them to use a limited resource badly can slow or destroy them!

Image from the article:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/medicine-nobel-2019-discovery-how-cells-sense-oxygen-cancer-wins?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=latest-newsletter-v2&utm_source=Latest_Headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest_Headlines

These Men have found out the way cells sense and respond to oxygen.

Article on Nobel prize winners:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/medicine-nobel-2019-discovery-how-cells-sense-oxygen-cancer-wins?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=latest-newsletter-v2&utm_source=Latest_Headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest_Headlines

Their breakthrough will allow Doctors to modulate oxygen to cancer cells to kill these cells with ischemia. Ulcers can be healed in the reverse fashion. This new hypoxia-inducible factor, or HIF, opens many gates for treatments!

Like candles or furnaces, cells need oxygen to function correctly. If oxygen isn’t regulated properly, cells could die. The work has implications for nearly every aspect of physiology from metabolism to exercise, immunity, embryo development and the response to lack of oxygen at high altitudes, Nobel committee member Randall Johnson, noted during the announcement of the prize by the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on October 7. The HIF system plays a role in anemia, cancer, heart attack, stroke and other disorders.

I had not considered the High Altitude aspect. With a pill you wouldn't need oxygen on mount Everest. Pilots could take one in case the oxygen failed, so they could remain functional while they return the plane to a safe altitude.

This could be used for sound healing. They currently use Hyperbaric Oxygen treatments to heal pressure ulcers and non healing wounds. This treatment could provide the same levels of cellular oxygen , without the massive equipment, while saving the Patient time too!

Article on the cancer battlefield already testing this>
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/instead-starving-cancer-researchers-go-after-its-defenses

Researchers are using this HIF enzyme to tailor an attack of specific cancers already.

Peloton Therapeutics Inc. in Dallas published results of the first animal tests of the compound in Nature in November. In mice with implanted grafts of human kidney tumors, PT2399 split HIF-2 and slowed growth in 56 percent of tumors — better than a standard treatment. Brugarolas hypothesizes that the drug worked only about half the time because the other half of tumors relied more heavily on HIF-1.

HIF-1’s accomplice, HIF-2, may be a more available target. HIF-2 is a molecule made of two parts that clamp onto DNA to trigger production of other proteins that make tumors tougher to kill. In 2009, structural biologists at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas discovered that the HIF-2 protein had a large cavity. “Usually proteins don’t have holes inside them,” says James Brugarolas, leader of UT Southwestern’s kidney cancer program. With the discovery, researchers began working on a way to use the gap as a foothold for drugs.

This is an exciting time as they are moving into Human trials already. That is a measure of the importance of this find, human trials usually takes years, and they are allowing it at blinding speed for a human trial! -

A similar HIF-2–busting drug is now in Phase I safety testing in humans, described in June in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. While Phase I studies are not designed to test whether the treatment works, the drug showed few side effects among 51 people with advanced kidney cancer who took the drug at ever-increasing doses. The patients had already been through multiple types of treatments, one as many as seven. After taking the drug, 16 patients experienced a slowing in disease progression, three more had a partial response and one a complete reversal. Given the dearth of treatments for advanced kidney cancer, Brugarolas says, “this is a big deal.”

This will save a lot of people; Impressive science here folks! When a scientist pays close attention to the smallest things, Big things happen; well played guys!