Purification and characterization of hypoxia-indicible factor 1.

Semenza and postdoctoral fellow Guang Wang discovered transcription factor HIF-1, a transcription factor that responds to decreases in available oxygen in the cellular environment, or hypoxia.

IN 2019 Semenza shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with William G. Kaelin Jr. and Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”