On Dec. 10 in Stockholm, Sweden, Akrit Sodhi, the Branna and Irving Sisenwein Professor of Ophthalmology at Wilmer Eye Institute, watched as Johns Hopkins researcher Gregg Semenza — his friend, mentor, and longtime colleague — accepted the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Semenza, along with William Kaelin Jr. and Peter Ratcliffe, received the award for the discovery of how cells adapt and respond to changing oxygen availability.

Semenza’s discovery of the master regulator of oxygen homeostasis, hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1, has been foundational to Sodhi’s own research, which focuses on identifying ways to halt or slow the progression of sight-stealing diseases of the retina — many of which are driven or further complicated by reduced oxygen levels. Dr. Sodhi’s research is the cover story in the Nov. 1, 2019, issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation as well as a focus of HIF Therapeutics, a company formed by Semenza and Sodhi to explore therapeutic approaches targeting HIF for treating and preventing ocular disease and cancer.