# HIF-1α (HIF1A)

Source: https://onco.cc/targets/hif1a/  
OnCo record `hif1a` (Target). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

HIF-1α is the sensor that lets a tumour cope with low oxygen by switching on blood-vessel growth and sugar burning. It has no direct drug yet; belzutifan hits its sibling HIF-2α, and the mTOR inhibitor temsirolimus lowers HIF-1α levels indirectly.

## Summary

HIF1A (chromosome 14q23.2) encodes the oxygen-regulated subunit of hypoxia-inducible factor 1, the master transcriptional regulator of the adaptive response to hypoxia: under low oxygen it activates more than 40 genes including erythropoietin, glucose transporters, glycolytic enzymes and VEGF, heterodimerises with ARNT (HIF-1β) to bind DNA, and is essential for embryonic vascularisation, tumour angiogenesis and ischaemic disease (UniProt Q16665). The VHL/HIF pathway record explains that prolyl hydroxylases mark HIF-α for VHL-dependent destruction in normoxia and that VHL loss in most clear-cell renal cancers lets HIF-α accumulate. In OnCo, HIF-1α is named as the isoform belzutifan does not target (belzutifan stops HIF-2α dimerising with HIF-1β) and as the protein whose translation temsirolimus reduces by inhibiting mTORC1.

## Fields

- Kind: Target
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Also known as: HIF-1; HIF-1 alpha; HIF1; MOP1; hypoxia inducible factor 1 subunit alpha
- Tags: wave5-target
- Symbol: HIF1A
- Class: transcription
- Biology: HIF-1α and HIF-2α share the ARNT partner and many hypoxia genes; the pathway record calls HIF-2α the oncogenic paralogue in renal cell carcinoma, which is why the approved inhibitor was built for that isoform and HIF-1α remains without a direct drug in the corpus.
- Where found: Hypoxic regions of solid tumours; Clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (VHL loss stabilises HIF-α)

## Notes

- Prevalence not recorded in this wave: HGNC and UniProt carry no positivity rates and no other source was consulted.

## Sources

- HGNC HGNC:4910: https://www.genenames.org/data/gene-symbol-report/#!/hgnc_id/HGNC:4910
- UniProt Q16665: https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/Q16665/entry
- NCBI Gene 3091: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/3091

## Connected records

- drugs: [Belzutifan](https://onco.cc/drugs/belzutifan/), [Temsirolimus](https://onco.cc/drugs/temsirolimus/)
- targets: [HIF-2α](https://onco.cc/targets/hif2a/), [mTOR](https://onco.cc/targets/mtor/), [VEGF / VEGFR](https://onco.cc/targets/vegf/)
- cancers: [Clear cell renal cell carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/clear-cell-rcc/), [Renal cell carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/rcc/)
- pathways: [Cancer metabolism](https://onco.cc/pathways/cancer-metabolism/), [Renal cell carcinoma (KEGG map)](https://onco.cc/pathways/renal-cell-carcinoma-signalling/), [The angiogenic switch & tumour vessels](https://onco.cc/pathways/angiogenic-switch/), [VHL / HIF oxygen sensing](https://onco.cc/pathways/hif-vhl/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/hif1a.json