Two Americans and a Briton won the 2019 Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discovering a molecular switch that regulates how cells adapt to fluctuating oxygen levels, opening up new approaches to treating heart failure, anemia and cancer. William Kaelin at the U.S. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School said that he was overwhelmed to receive a predawn call to say he and two other doctors, Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University and Peter Ratcliffe of Oxford University, had won the 9 million Swedish crown ($913,000) prize.

The scientists' work established the basis for understanding of how oxygen levels are sensed by cells, a discovery that is being explored by medical researchers seeking to develop treatments for various diseases that work by either activating or blocking the body's oxygen-sensing machinery.

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