Constanze Bonifer 47th Lorne Genome Conference 2026

Constanze Bonifer

Constanze Bonifer did her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Centre for Molecular Biology, University of Heidelberg. Her postdoctoral training was at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and the National Institute for Medical Research in London. From August 2011 to the end of 2023, Constanze held a Chair of Experimental Haematology in Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham. She is the Founding Director of the Birmingham Centre of Genome Biology BCGB and is now Emeritus Chair of Experimental Haematology. For more than 35 years she has been engaged in research in the field of gene regulation in the hematopoietic system. She is particularly interested in the question of how transcription factors program chromatin in development and in leukaemia. Highlights of her work include the identification of chromatin priming mechanisms in early blood progenitor cells, the discovery that aberrantly activated repeat elements can drive the expression of oncogenes in lymphoma and her studies of transcriptional reprogramming in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia AML as a consequence of mutations in transcriptional regulator genes. Her recent work studies how gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and enhancers define cellular identities, how signalling processes regulate the transition of one GRN to another and how this process is subverted in AML. In recognition of her lifetime achievements, she was recently awarded the 2025 Donald Metcalf Award from the International Society for Experimental Hematology. In 2024 Constanze Bonifer joined the Center for Stem Cell Medicine at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne as a Principal Research Fellow and Honorary Professor of the University of Melbourne.