Dominique Bonnet, Group Leader-Haematopoietic Stem Cell Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, has made major contributions to the characterisation of human normal and leukemic stem cells. As a postdoc she identified the AML leukemic stem cell, a seminal discovery that has since been extended to solid cancers. As an independent researcher, she has exploited and developed xenotransplantation models to study human leukaemia and haematopoietic stem cells. Using MRI, she is now translating this work into patients and started an enabling clinical study.
Professor Bonnet has used bioengineering to develop a new 3D scaffold system that mimics the human bone marrow niche to start interrogating normal and leukemic stem cell interactions with the bone marrow microenvironment in a human setting.