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William G. Kaelin Jr., MD, is the Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. He earned undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics as well as his MD degree from Duke University in 1982. Kaelin completed his internal medicine residency training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he served as chief medical resident. He then undertook a clinical fellowship in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a McDonnell Scholar. Since 1998, he has been an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and he joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School as a professor in 2002. He is also affiliated with the Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Kaelin's research program centers on defining the biochemical functions of tumor suppressor proteins, including the retinoblastoma protein (pRB) and the von Hippel-Lindau protein (pVHL), to understand mechanistically how mutations in these genes cause cancer. His investigations into the VHL protein were pivotal in motivating the clinical development and successful testing of VEGF inhibitors and the first HIF-2 inhibitor approved for kidney cancer treatment. Furthermore, this body of work has illuminated how cells sense and respond to oxygen availability, with implications extending to non-cancerous conditions such as anemia, myocardial infarction, and stroke. For these contributions to oxygen sensing pathways, Kaelin shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza. His extensive honors also encompass the 2016 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the 2016 Princess Takamatsu Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, the 2016 Science of Oncology Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the 2018 Massry Prize, the 2014 Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the 2010 Canada Gairdner International Award, the 2012 Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the 2011 Alfred Knudson Award in Cancer Genetics from the National Cancer Institute. Kaelin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, the Institute of Medicine in 2007, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020. Additional recognitions include the 2020 Association of American Cancer Institutes Distinguished Scientist Award, the 2021 Harriet P. Dustan Award from the American College of Physicians, and the 2022 Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement.
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