Surviving ischemia: adaptive responses mediated by hypoxia-inducible factor 1

Tissue responses to ischemiaWhile the other Perspectives in this series provide readers with state-of-the-art overviews of responses to ischemia on an organ-by-organ basis, I focus here on a single transcription factor, hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1), and its role in the physiologic responses to hypoxia and ischemia.Whether in the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, or muscle, HIF-1 is essential for ischemiainduced angiogenesis, as described by Isner (this Perspective series, ref. 1), and it may also be a critical mediator of late-phase preconditioning, as described by Williams and Benjamin (this Perspective series, ref.2).For these reasons, HIF-1 and the genes under its control may represent novel therapeutic targets for ameliorating the effects of ischemia in a variety of clinical settings.