3 get Nobel Medicine prize for learning how cells use oxygen

Stockholm (AP): Two Americans and a British scientist won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering how the body's cells sense and react to oxygen levels, work that has paved the way for new strategies to fight anemia, cancer and other diseases, the Nobel Committee said.

Drs. William G Kaelin Jr of Harvard University, Gregg L Semenza of Johns Hopkins University and Peter J Ratcliffe at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain and Oxford University will share equally the 9 million kronor (USD 918,000) cash award, the Karolinska Institute said.

It is the 110th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901. Their work has "greatly expanded our knowledge of how physiological response makes life possible," the committee said, explaining that the scientists identified the biological machinery that regulates how genes respond to varying levels of oxygen. That response is key to things like producing red blood cells, generating new blood vessels and fine-tuning the immune system.