Dr. Charles Chan is an Instructor at Stanford’s Stem Cell Institute with over 15 years of experience investigating the biology of aging in stem cells and stem cell niches. Using a reductionist approach, Dr. Chan has pioneered techniques to identify and isolate stem/progenitor cells of individual tissue types, including bone, cartilage, and blood vessels. These basic components can also be combined together to reconstitute a functional bone marrow niche that can support hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). His team recently identified a mouse skeletal stem cell (mSSC) that has the ability to make bone, cartilage, and HSC niches, in vitro and in vivo. Dr. Chan leads a small group of graduate students and medical fellows on understanding how SSC-HSC interactions in the bone marrow niche changes with age.