Dr. Kaelin is the Sidney Farber Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kaelin was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, with co-recipients Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Dr. Gregg L. Semenza, for discoveries related to the mechanisms by which cells sense and respond to oxygen levels. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Association of American Physicians, and has been a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator since 1998.
Dr. Kaelin’s research seeks to understand how mutations affecting tumor-suppressor genes cause cancer and to lay the foundation for new anticancer therapies. Dr. Kaelin has received numerous recognitions for his work, including the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Princess Takamatsu Award (AACR), the Science of Oncology Award (ASCO) and the Canada Gairdner International Award. Dr. Kaelin obtained his undergraduate and MD degrees from Duke University and completed his training in internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he served as chief medical resident. He was a clinical fellow in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, during which time he was a McDonnell Scholar.