Prof. Iannis Aifantis is an internationally recognised immunologist and cancer biologist, specialising in the investigation of T cell acute leukaemia (T-ALL), a common form of childhood leukaemia. He is the chairman of the Department of Pathology of the NYU School of Medicine and leads the Iannis Aifantis Lab, which is involved in studying the molecular mechanisms driving normal stem cell differentiation and malignant transformation.
He earned his BSc degree in Biology and an MSc degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from the University of Crete, Greece. He obtained his PhD in the laboratory of immunologist Harald von Boehmer at the University of Paris and he later followed him to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and to the Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow.
His laboratory focuses on elucidating the subtle molecular signalling events during hematopoiesis and how HSCs can undergo malignant transformation, causing T cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. He has earned numerous awards and honours, including the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, the Cancer Research Institute Young Investigator Award and the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research Scholar Award.