Stefan Costantinescu

Stefan N. Constantinescu is Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at Université catholique de Louvain, head a research unit in cell signalling and molecular hematology at Duve Institute and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Brussels, Belgium. He is an MD and PhD that has received postdoctoral training in molecular cell biology with Prof. Harvey F. Lodish at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA as a fellow of the Medical Foundation Boston and of the Anna Fuller Fund (1995-2000). In 2000 he started his independent laboratory at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Brussels where he studies the structure and function of cytokine receptors, Janus kinases and STATs, as well as signalling in normal and pathological blood formation.

His research group contributed in 2005 in collaboration with William Vainchenker to the discovery of JAK2 V617F mutation myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). He also reported the first JAK1 and TYK2 active mutants in 2005 now detected in T-leukemia and identified key thrombopoietin receptor mutations that induce myeloproliferative neoplasms and elucidated in collaboration with R. Kralovics and W. Vainchenker the mechanisms by which calreticulin mutants induce MPNs. He is an Internal Consultant in the Service of Hematology at the Saint Luc University Hospital in Brussels. In addition, he recently (2021) started a second research group on cancer signalling and epigenetics at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford within the Ludwig Cancer Research Oxford where he will spend 25% of his time.

He is a Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, of the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Romanian Academy and was recently elected President of the Federation of European Academies of Medicine for the 2021-2024 mandate. For his research he received the Five Year Prize for Basic Medical Sciences of the Federal Belgian Government in 2015 and the Prize of the Gaston and Alexandre Tytgat Foundation in 2021.