# William G. Kaelin Jr.

Source: https://onco.cc/people/william-kaelin/  
OnCo record `william-kaelin` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

William Kaelin is the Nobel laureate whose work on VHL and HIF-2α led directly to belzutifan.

## Summary

William G. Kaelin Jr. is the Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine and an HHMI Investigator at Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center. He is the Nobel laureate who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering how cells sense oxygen, through work on the VHL tumour suppressor and hypoxia-inducible factor. His selected paper shows that HIF alpha is targeted for VHL-mediated destruction by proline hydroxylation. His VHL and HIF work defined the target for HIF-2 alpha inhibitors such as belzutifan, now approved in kidney cancer.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Role: Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine; HHMI Investigator
- Specialisms: VHL and HIF biology; Kidney cancer; Oxygen sensing

## Sources

- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Kaelin%20WG%5BAuthor%5D

## Connected records

- cancers: [Renal cell carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/rcc/)
- targets: [HIF-2α](https://onco.cc/targets/hif2a/)
- drugs: [Belzutifan](https://onco.cc/drugs/belzutifan/)
- institutions: [Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/dana-farber/), [Howard Hughes Medical Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/hhmi/)
- pathways: [VHL / HIF oxygen sensing](https://onco.cc/pathways/hif-vhl/)

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