Background
Peter John Ratcliffe was born on May 14, 1954, in Morecambe, Lancashire, United Kingdom. He is a son of William and Alice Margaret (Bibby) Ratcliffe.
2019
Stocholm, Sweden
Twelve of the fifteen Nobel Laureates of 2019 assembled at the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm on 12 December 2019. Back row: James Peebles, Abhijit Banerjee, Didier Queloz, Michael Kremer, William G. Kaelin Jr, and Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe. Front row: Olga Tokarczuk, Akira Yoshino, Esther Duflo, M. Stanley Whittingham, Gregg L. Semenza, and Michel Mayor.
2013
Sir Peter Ratcliffe at the award ceremony for the Jakob Herz Prize on 2 February 2013 in Erlangen with Professor Jürgen Schüttler and Professor Dieter Grüske.
2019
Stortorget 2, 103 16 Stockholm, Sweden
Medicine Laureate Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe at Nobel Prize Museum.
2019
Nobels väg 6, 171 65 Solna, Sweden
Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe delivering his Nobel Lecture on 7 December 2019 at Aula Medica, Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
2019
Stocholm, Sweden
Twelve of the fifteen Nobel Laureates of 2019 assembled at the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm on 12 December 2019. Back row: James Peebles, Abhijit Banerjee, Didier Queloz, Michael Kremer, William G. Kaelin Jr, and Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe. Front row: Olga Tokarczuk, Akira Yoshino, Esther Duflo, M. Stanley Whittingham, Gregg L. Semenza, and Michel Mayor.
2019
Hötorget 8, 103 87 Stockholm, Sweden
Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe after receiving his Nobel Prize from H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at Konserthuset Stockholm on 10 December 2019.
2019
Hötorget 8, 103 87 Stockholm, Sweden
Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe receiving his Nobel Prize from H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at Konserthuset Stockholm on 10 December 2019.
2019
Sir Peter Ratcliffe sitting at his desk, following the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on 7 October 2019.
2019
Sir Peter Ratcliffe sitting at his desk, following the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on 7 October 2019.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
Portrait of Sir Peter Ratcliffe.
East Rd, Lancaster LA1 3EF, United Kingdom
Peter J. Ratcliffe studied at Lancaster Royal Grammar School.
W Smithfield, London EC1A 7BE, United Kingdom
Peter J. Ratcliffe studied at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
The Old Schools, Trinity Ln, Cambridge CB2 1TN, United Kingdom
Peter J. Ratcliffe attended the University of Cambridge.
Trinity St, Cambridge CB2 1TA, United Kingdom
Peter J. Ratcliffe attended Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge.
Peter John Ratcliffe was born on May 14, 1954, in Morecambe, Lancashire, United Kingdom. He is a son of William and Alice Margaret (Bibby) Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School from 1965 to 1971 and later studied medicine at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. In 1978 he completed bachelor’s degrees in medicine and surgery at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, and in 1987 he graduated from Cambridge with a medical degree. He subsequently went to the University of Oxford to study renal medicine with a particular interest in oxygen delivery to renal tissues.
Peter J. Ratcliffe started his career as a house officer at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, in 1978-1979. Later he worked as a Senior house officer at Hammersmith Hospital, Brompton Hospital, National Hospital Nervous Diseases, 1979-1981. From 1981 to 1983 he was a Medical registrar at Oxford Hospitals, and from 1983 to 1987 was a medical research council fellow there.
In 1989 he established a laboratory at Oxford in order to focus his research specifically on cellular oxygen-sensing pathways and erythropoietin regulation. From 2004 to 2016 he served as head of the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford. In 2016 he was appointed director of Oxford’s Target Discovery Institute and clinical research director at the Francis Crick Institute, London.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Ratcliffe was starting his research, it was known that erythropoietin is produced by kidney cells when blood oxygen levels are reduced. However, Ratcliffe’s investigations of erythropoietin production led to the realization that cells in multiple other organs, including the brain and the liver, also are equipped with oxygen-sensing abilities. He also found that cellular responses to oxygen availability affect other processes in cells, such as differentiation and metabolism. In particular, Ratcliffe and Kaelin, working independently, discovered that a chemical modification known as prolyl hydroxylation on a molecule called hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) dictates how cells respond to changes in oxygen levels. When the modification is present, HIF is marked for degradation. When absent, HIF persists, and key cellular processes are altered to facilitate adaptation to hypoxic conditions, thereby enabling cells to continue to grow and replicate. The findings were especially significant for their impact on scientists’ understanding of cancer: tumors often thrive under hypoxic conditions, which is in large part due to elevated HIF activity.
Peter J. Ratcliffe's laboratory works on understanding the mechanisms by which cells sense and signal hypoxia (low oxygen levels). Oxygen is of fundamental importance for most living organisms, and the maintenance of oxygen homeostasis is a central physiological challenge for all large animals. Hypoxia is an important component of many human diseases including cancer, heart disease, stroke, vascular disease, and anaemia.
Working initially on the regulation of the haematopoietic growth factor erythropoietin (which shows strong transcriptional upregulation by hypoxia), the laboratory discovered that the underlying oxygen-sensitive signal pathway is widely operative in mammalian cells, extends to invertebrates, and mediates a range of other transcriptional responses including those regulating angiogenesis and metabolism. The laboratory went to define the oxygen sensing and signalling pathways that link the essential transcription factor, hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) to the availability of oxygen.
The laboratory discovered that these links involve an unprecedented mode of cell signalling involving post-translational hydroxylations at specific prolyl and asparaginyl residues within HIF that are catalysed by a series of non-haem Fe(II) enzymes belonging to the 2-oxoglutarate (2-OG) dependent dioxygenase superfamily. The obligate requirement for molecular oxygen in the reaction confers oxygen dependence, though emerging evidence suggests the enzymes integrate other signals generated by redox and metabolic stresses.
Together with our collaborators, the laboratory operates an extensive range of programmes exploring the extent, mechanisms and biological functions of these and related 2-OG oxygenases. These programmes range across, protein science, structural biology and enzymology, through cell biology, systems physiology, epigenetics and cancer biology, to translational programmes in ischaemia therapeutics and integrative human physiology.
Based on the evolutionary conservation of enzymatic oxidations led to protein degradation, which apparently signals oxygen levels in all four eukaryotic kingdoms, the laboratory has been able to track systems which were previously unknown in human cells, but which offer new opportunities for the understanding of the human hypoxic disease, including cancer.
Peter J. Ratcliffe married Fiona Mary MacDougall on February 19, 1983. The couple has one child, Anna Mary.