Prof. Dr. Ștefan N. Constantinescu

Prof. Dr. Ștefan Constantinescu is Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Université Catholique de Louvain and leads a laboratory specializing in cell signaling and molecular hematology at the de Duve Institute and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Brussels, Belgium. He is a physician and holds a Ph.D. in medical sciences, having pursued postdoctoral training in cell biology under the guidance of Professor Harvey F. Lodish at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, as a Medical Foundation Boston and Anna Fuller Fund fellow (1995-2000). In 2000, he established his own laboratory at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Brussels, where he studies the structure and function of cytokine receptors, Janus kinases, and STAT proteins, as well as signaling in normal and pathological hematopoiesis.

His research group, together with William Vainchenker’s, contributed to the discovery of the JAK2 V617F mutation in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) in 2005, together with William Vainchenker's. He also reported the first active JAK1 and TYK2 gene mutations in 2005, now detected in T-cell leukemia, and identified thrombopoietin receptor mutations that induce myeloproliferative neoplasms. Additionally, in collaboration with R. Kralovics and W. Vainchenker, he elucidated the mechanisms by which mutations in the calreticulin gene induce MPNs. 

In addition, he is an internal consultant in the Hematology Service of Saint Luc University Hospital in Brussels. Also, in 2021, he started a second research group in cancer signaling and epigenetics at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, within Ludwig Cancer Research Oxford.

He is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Romanian Academy, and was recently elected President of the Federation of European Academies of Medicine for the 2021–2024 term. 

For his research, he received the Belgian Federal Government's Five-Year Prize for Fundamental Medical Sciences in 2015 and the Gaston and Alexandre Tytgat Foundation Prize in 2021.