Peking University, Oct.13, 2014: With the growing problems of subfertility, especially age related infertility, “fertility preservation” has become a heated issue for researchers and experts in reproductive medicine worldwide.

In October 2014, Lancet (IF: 39.207), one of world’s top professional journals of medicine, published three articles which reviewed the recent development in the research of fertility preservation for cancer patients and age-related subfertilized problems. The research team from Peking University Third Hospital, led by Prof. Qiao Jie, as was invited, wrote a comment on fertility preservation for the same print of the journal, entitled "Fertility preservation: challenges and opportunities". This comment discussed the significance and the status quo of fertility preservation, and also proposed the future planning in this field.

In this comment, the authors, Professor Qiao Jie, M.D., Ph.D. and chief physician Li Rong, M.D., Ph.D., claimed that subfertility had become one of a major medical problem impacting the quality of people’s life, especially for those young cancer patients or couples who delayed childbearing. Fertility preservation has already become an effective and necessary way to preserve and restore their fertility. Currently, with the development of assisted reproductive technology, cryopreservation of embryo, oocyte and sperm have been applied wildly in clinic. At the same time, ovarian tissue cryopreservation and stem cell research are very likely to offer new possibilities in the future for fertility preservation. However, there are still several obstacles in the way, including ethical restrictions, theoretical limitations, technical deficiencies and the lack of instruments and equipments, etc. Therefore, to insure the benign development in fertility preservation area, international organizations should be established to further guide the clinical research. Meanwhile, there is also an urge to strengthen international cooperation, establish effective continuing education network, and promote translational medical development and multi-discipline exchange.

This print of Lancet published a series of articles on fertility preservation, reflecting the high importance it attached to fertility preservation research and clinical applications in the international field of biomedicine. The publication of Professor Qiao and her research team’s comment proved that China had gained the international recognition in the leading position in the world in reproduction medicine field.

Edited by: Li Chiyang