The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) has awarded Hopkins Children’s pediatrician and geneticist Gregg Semenza the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award for his "contributions to the molecular understanding of cellular oxygen sensing and cellular adaptation to hypoxia." Semenza shares the $10,000 honorarium with William G. Kaelin Jr., M.D., of Harvard Medical School.

The C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, Semenza discovered and characterized Hypoxia Inducible Factor 1 Alpha, or HIF-1alpha, a gene that encodes a protein that senses oxygen levels in cells. In 1995, he and his team purified and isolated the gene, and they since have discovered major roles for HIF proteins in organismal development and cellular homeostasis. His work showed that HIFs serve as master regulators of the cellular oxygen response by turning on genes that help cells adapt to changes in oxygen levels. Semenza’s team has since been at the forefront of translational studies to augment HIF for conditions that require increased oxygen and blood flow, including cardiovascular diseases, wound healing and organ transplantation, as well as studies of HIF inhibitors to decrease oxygen and blood flow in conditions including cancer, ocular neovascularization and pulmonary hypertension.

Semenza joined Hopkins as a postdoctoral fellow in 1986 and its faculty in 1990. He was elected to the ASCI in 1995. In 2000, he received the E. Mead Johnson Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Society of Pediatric Research for his study of the molecular response to hypoxia.

Director of the Vascular Program in Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering and a member of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of GeneticMedicine, Semenza is a professor in the departments of Pediatrics, Medicine, Oncology, Radiation Oncology, and Biological Chemistry. He is also affiliated with the Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology. A Founding Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics, he was elected to the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Sciences in 2008.

Semenza presents the Korsmeyer Lecture at the 2012 ASCI/AAP Meeting, April 27 to 29, in Chicago, IL.