Since 2023, Dr. Kerstin B. Kaufmann has held an appointment as Assistant Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network. She earned her MSc in Molecular Medicine from the University of Erlangen (Germany, 2009) and her PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany, 2013), where she specialized in gene and cell therapy for blood diseases. Her scientific training included extended research stays at the Biomedical Center of Uppsala University (Sweden), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda (USA), and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (Israel). From 2014 to 2021, Dr. Kaufmann completed her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. John Dick at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, where she investigated normal and leukemia stem cell biology — also the focus of her current research.

Dr. Kaufmann’s research focuses on uncovering the molecular mechanisms that enable stem cells to sustain lifelong tissue maintenance and regeneration without exhaustion. Her work centers on human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), exploring how they balance self-renewal and differentiation to meet the body’s dynamic blood production needs. She investigates the regulatory pathways that prevent over-activation and depletion of the stem cell pool during physiological and non-physiological stress, e.g. blood loss or transplantation, respectively. A major area of her research examines how these mechanisms are co-opted in leukemia, leading to the persistence of cancer stem cells. Her team recently identified sex-specific molecular programs that influence stem cell activation, potentially contributing to the higher incidence of leukemia in males. Building on these findings, Dr. Kaufmann aims to define sex-specific therapeutic targets that could inform personalized, precision-based cancer treatments, early detection or prevention.

Her long-term vision is to delineate the molecular heterogeneity of leukemia stem cells across patients and to uncover shared “stemness” programs between normal and malignant hematopoiesis. By identifying conserved molecular signatures that persist independent of the mutational landscape, her research seeks to expose fundamental vulnerabilities in leukemia stem cells. She integrates high-dimensional omics with innovative in vitro and in vivo models using primary human cells to capture the complexity of stem cell hierarchies and the underlying intricate molecular mechanisms driving them. Dr. Kaufmann’s approach—leveraging insights from both normal and malignant systems—has already led to key discoveries, including the identification of INKA1 as a regulator of stemness and CD112-associated quiescent states in normal and leukemia stem cells. Ultimately, her research aims to generate mechanistic insights and molecular tools that advance our understanding of hematopoietic stem cell biology and inform targeted therapeutic strategies for leukemia and beyond.

For a list of Dr. Kaufmann's publications, please visit PubMed or ORCID.