Guangwen (Gavin) Wang is the Director of the Stem Cell Core in the Department of Genetics, Stanford University. Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. training in Peking University, Beijing. During his graduate study, he developed a feeder-free and chemically defined culture system to maintain the pluripotent human embryonic stem (ES) cells. He did his Postdoctoral research at Harvard University and studied the epigenetic regulation in early development using mouse ES cells. Prior to his current position, Dr. Wang worked as a senior scientist in Stemgent, Inc, to provide induced-pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derivation services to both academic research institutes and biopharmaceutical companies.
In 2012, Dr. Wang initiated the Stem Cell Core at Stanford University. The major focus of the facility is to collaborate with different labs for iPSC derivation, characterization and differentiation. His group is now working to build an iPSC biobank from 300 patients with different types of heart disease. With the support of the Grace Science Foundation, the lab is also using iPSC as the tool to study the mechanism underlying the ultra-rare NGLY1 Deficiency.
