[2] She is co-chair of the Department of Stem Cells and Regenerative Biology at Harvard Medical School.
She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Irving Weissman at Stanford University School of Medicine.
She has also identified novel regulators (such as EGR1) of stem cell trafficking and stem cell number in bone marrow and during immune responses, and identified blood-borne proteins, such as GDF11, that in mice can reverse some of the pathological changes that occur in aging tissues.
[2] She co-founded a company based on this work, Elevian in 2018 that aims to apply GDF11 to stroke and other conditions.
[4][5] There are other data, however, that indicate that GDF11 functions to inhibit muscle regeneration[6] Two publications involving work by a postdoctoral researcher in the Wagers lab in 2008 were retracted by their other authors, one from Nature (2010)[7] and one from Blood (August 2008).