William Kaelin Jr.
William G. Kaelin Jr. is an American Nobel laureate physician-scientist. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. His laboratory studies tumor suppressor proteins.
In 2016, Kaelin received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Award.
He also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019 along with Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza.
Early life and education
Kaelin was born in New York City on November 23, 1957, to William George and Nancy Priscilla Kaelin. Kaelin earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics and chemistry at Duke University, and stayed to attain an MD, graduating in 1982. He did his residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and his fellowship in oncology at Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. After deciding as an undergraduate that research was not a strength of his, at DFCI he did research in the lab of David Livingston, where he found success in the study of retinoblastoma. In 1992, he set up his own lab at DFCI down the hall from Livingston's where he investigated hereditary forms of cancer such as von Hippel–Lindau disease. He became a professor at Harvard Medical School in 2002.Career
He became assistant director of Basic Science at the Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in 2008. His research at Dana–Farber has focused on understanding the role of mutations in tumor suppressor genes in cancer development. His major work has been on the retinoblastoma, von Hippel–Lindau, and p53 tumor suppressor genes.His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and others.
He serves as vice-chair of Scientific Programs on the of Directors and Chair of the Damon Runyon Physician-Scientist Training Award selection committee and is a member of the board of directors at Eli Lilly and the Stand Up to Cancer scientific advisory committee.