Peter Ratcliffe

University of Oxford

Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe is a British physician-scientist who directs the Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford, serves as Clinical Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute in London, and is a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Oxford. His laboratory dissected the molecular machinery cells use to sense oxygen, identifying the prolyl-hydroxylase enzymes (PHDs) that, in the presence of oxygen, tag hypoxia-inducible factor for VHL-mediated degradation, thereby providing the enzymatic oxygen sensor at the heart of the pathway. For these discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability he shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza, having earlier shared the 2016 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. With Oxford colleagues Patrick Maxwell, Christopher Pugh and the chemist Christopher Schofield, Ratcliffe co-founded ReOx Ltd, an Oxford spin-out developing HIF-modulating small molecules for ischemic disease and anemia, a discovery lineage that also underpins clinically approved prolyl-hydroxylase inhibitors such as roxadustat. His combination of fundamental enzyme biology and translational spin-out activity makes his group a natural partner for suppliers of enzymology, mass-spectrometry and hypoxia research platforms.