PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Dr. Klonisch has an M.D., Ph.D. degree from the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Germany. He started his academic career at the Institute of Medical Microbiology, University of Mainz, Germany, under the tutelage of Prof. Paul Klein and Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi. He received a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, Germany, to pursue molecular microbiology research at the Dept. of Microbiology, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Ontario Veterinary College, U of Guelph, under the tutelage of the late Prof. David Porter. In 1994, Dr. Klonisch joined the Immunoprotein Engineering group of Prof. Ivan Roitt at the University College London, London, UK, where he worked as a senior research fellow on the concept of synergistic bispecific antibodies and epitope mapping of pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG). In 1996, Dr. Klonisch joined the Dept. of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg under the headship of Prof. Bernd Fischer. Here, he taught all aspects of anatomy and performed research into thyroid and breast cancer. Dr. Klonisch received his certification as anatomist by the German Anatomical Society in 1999 and completed his Habilitation work in 2000. In 2004, Dr. Klonisch accepted the position as Full Professor and Head at the Dept. of Human Anatomy and Cell Science at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. After serving as dept. head for 15 years, Dr. Klonisch joined the Anatomy faculty as a regular member in 2020.

Cancer Research is his passion, with a main focus on adult brain tumors. He founded the Brain Tumor Research Alliance Manitoba (BTRAM)  at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, and is an Adjunct Scientist at CancerCareManitoba. Dr. Klonisch’s research explores novel experimental drugs that target cancer cells directly and/or enhance immune responses against cancer cells in an effort to find more effective anticancer therapies. As a translational medical scientist, he is keenly interested in molecular pathway signaling and cell fate decisions of cancer stem cells in response to treatments. He uses mouse xenograft models to study drug responses in vivo. His lab has isolates brain tumor cells from fresh patient brain tumor tissues and has generated an extensive brain tumor live cell resource which allows him and his collaborators to address important questions related to gliomagenesis, stem/ progenitor cell plasticity, cellular heterogeneity within human brain tumors and mechanisms of tissue invasion and metastasis of adult brain tumors.