Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
Showing 1-34 of 34 Results
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Heather Gentner
Director of Finance and Administration (SoM), Stem Cell Bio Regenerative Med Institute
Current Role at StanfordI am the Director of Finance and Administration for the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (ISCBRM) in the School of Medicine. I oversee and carry out administrative and financial related functions for the department.
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Wan-Jin Lu
Basic Life Research Scientist, Stem Cell Bio Regenerative Med Institute
BioDr. Wan-Jin Lu is a Research Scientist in Dr. Phil Beachy's lab. Wan-Jin grew up in Taiwan, obtained her B.S. in Zoology at National Taiwan University and completed her PhD in Genetics and Development at UT Southwestern in the lab of Dr. John Abrams. Her Ph.D. research involved the identification of the evolutionary conserved function of the tumor suppressor gene p53 that ensures the quality control of germ cells. She then moved to the Bay Area, where she was a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in the Beachy lab. Her work currently focuses on understanding the function of Hedgehog signaling in taste receptor cell homeostasis and delineating the mechanisms of taste receptor regeneration after chemotherapy-induced loss.
Since 2017, she has been collaborating with Tabula Muris And Tabula Sapiens Consortium to investigate taste receptor stem cell renewal and regeneration in the Beachy lab. Her work has received funding support from California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, and NIH (R21 and R01). -
Yusuke Nakauchi, MD, PhD
Basic Life Research Scientist, Stem Cell Bio Regenerative Med Institute
BioDr. Yusuke Nakauchi is a scientist specializing in stem cell biology, focusing on normal hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), pre-leukemic HSCs, and leukemia stem cells (LSCs).
From 2005 to 2014, he trained and practiced as a clinical hematologist in Japan, where he witnessed allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) cure patients with otherwise fatal blood cancers—and saw many others suffer long-term complications from graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Having saved many patients, yet lost others he could not save, he became convinced that overcoming the limitations of leukemia treatment would require a deeper understanding of both normal HSCs and the LSCs responsible for relapse.
This conviction led him to pursue basic research. In 2010, he began his PhD in the laboratory of Professor Hiromitsu Nakauchi at the University of Tokyo, where he developed allele-specific anti-HLA monoclonal antibodies as a novel therapeutic strategy for GVHD—the first work to demonstrate that anti-HLA antibodies could be used therapeutically in HLA-mismatched transplantation. This research also revealed the importance of detailed chimerism analysis for understanding early post-transplant changes in a patient's blood and HSCs, a theme he later continued at Stanford. As a graduate student, he also contributed to work on iPSC-derived T cell therapy and a large-scale single-cell study of HSC aging.
In 2014, building on this clinical and research foundation, Dr. Nakauchi joined Professor Ravindra Majeti's laboratory at Stanford University as a postdoctoral fellow. His research there centered on TET2, one of the most frequently mutated genes in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and clonal hematopoiesis. Using CRISPR/Cas9 editing in human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, he developed a tractable model of TET2-mutant pre-leukemia, showing how TET2 loss reshapes epigenetic and transcriptional programs to drive clonal expansion—and how azacitidine plus vitamin C could restore normal function in TET2-mutant cells. His work now extends to antibody-based approaches to GVHD, single-cell analysis of CMML stem cells, and advanced in vivo mouse models, pursued through collaborations across and beyond Stanford.
Dr. Nakauchi's long-term goal is to bring personalized medicine to patients with AML and other blood cancers, believing that comparing normal HSCs, pre-leukemic HSCs, and LSCs at single-cell resolution is key to understanding—and ultimately preventing—leukemia. Drawing on years as a clinician who witnessed many patients lose their lives to AML, he is driven by the conviction that discoveries in stem cell biology will one day help cure and prevent the disease. -
Gernot Neumayer
Sr Res Scientist-Basic Life, Stem Cell Bio Regenerative Med Institute
Current Role at StanfordSenior Scientist
