Oxygen sensing

A fundamental challenge for complex multicellular organisms such as humans is continuous distribution of sufficient oxygen to all cells throughout the body. As such, oxygen plays a central role in health and disease and changes in oxygenation are critically involved in many disease processes, including myocardial ischaemia, stroke and even cancer tumour behaviour. Professor Maxwell aims to establish how different cells and organisms adapt to changes in oxygenation and whether we can use knowledge of molecular oxygen-sensing pathways to understand and treat disease.