Dr. Laura Calvi is an Associate Professor in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center. The central hypothesis pursued by her laboratory is that osteoblastic cells play a central role in orchestrating microenvironmental control of the behavior of both benign and malignant HSCs and that they can be targeted for therapeutic benefit. Indeed, research in Dr. Calvi’s laboratory and others first identified osteoblastic cells as a regulatory component in the HSC niche through genetic means and demonstrated that osteoblastic activation by parathyroid hormone (PTH) expands HSCs and improves recovery from myeloablation. Her laboratory uniquely uses techniques that bridge bone and stem cell biology to discover the regulatory components of the bone marrow microenvironment, with the long-term goal of identifying targets for therapeutic manipulation.