Prof. Kutluk H. Oktay Yale University School of Medicine, USA

Kutluk Oktay, MD, PhD, Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at Yale University School of Medicine, is a leading clinician-scientist in fertility preservation. Among his key contributions are the development and performance of first successful orthotopic and heterotopic ovarian transplantation procedures with cryopreserved tissue, development of tamoxifen and aromatase... read moreinhibitor supplemented ovarian stimulation protocols for breast cancer patients, development of random start protocols, discovery of the impact of BRCA mutations on ovarian reserve and oocyte aging, and development and performance of first successful robot assisted ovarian transplantation techniques. He is also the founder and first chair of the Fertility Preservation Special Interest Group at American Society of Reproductive Medicine and co-chair of Fertility Preservation Guidelines Committee at the American Society of Clinical Oncology since 2005. Dr. Oktay’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and other sources for over 17 years. Dr. Oktay is the Medical Director of the Innovation Institute of Fertility Preservation and IVF and heads the Research Laboratory of Fertility Preservation and Reproductive Molecular Biology at Yale School of Medicine. He has been repetitively named among the top doctors in his field by Castle and Connolly and other organizations in the USA and internationally. He has published over 200 manuscripts and book chapters and is currently the editor of the first textbook on ovarian cryopreservation and transplantation. Dr. Oktay’s research laboratory and team are currently focusing on basic and translational research projects on improving methods of fertility preservation as well as identifying and targeting molecular mechanisms of physiological and chemotherapy-induced gamete aging. More specifically on the latter, Oktay laboratory is studying the mechanisms that lead to age-related diminishment of oocyte repair in human oocytes and sperm with the ultimate goal of discovering druggable targets to halt or reverse reproductive aging.