2018 marked the 40th anniversary of the birth of the first IVF baby and since then there have been over 8 million babies born through IVF. There have been many developments in the area of Assisted Reproductive Technologies and in particular the emergence 20 years ago of the new field of Fertility Preservation. Women and young girls now have the opportunity to have pieces of their ovary removed and stored before undergoing damaging chemotherapy treatments with the goal of future re-implantation; this is not, however, feasible for a high proportion of patients.

In this talk, Evelyn discusses how we can grow the earliest stages of human eggs in the lab and where we are on the long path from lab to clinical application, to provide more options for women to preserve their fertility.