Molecular Male Reproductive Medicine

C.  Yan  Cheng is a distinguished professor of reproductive medicine at Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. He was a Senior Scientist and the Head of the Mary M.  Wohlford Laboratory for Male Contraceptive Research at the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research, inside the campus of the Rockefeller University in New  York City, for four decades, retiring in 2020. Dr. Cheng has received numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, the CONRAD Program, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Lupus Foundation, the Noopolis Foundation, and others, including the pharmaceutical industry, for over 4 decades and serve as Reviewers of multiple study panels of different funding agencies including NIH. He and his colleagues, including graduate students and postdocs, have made numerous discoveries in the field of reproductive biology, particularly the discoveries of several biologically active peptides released from structural proteins in the testis that regulate spermatogenesis. These autocrine and paracrine peptides create a local regulatory network that regulates and coordinates cellular events across the seminiferous epithelium to support the epithelial cycle of spermatogenesis, such as the release of sperm at spermiation and remodeling of the blood-testis barrier (BTB), that take place simultaneously across the epithelium at Stage VIII of the epithelial cycle. His research group also pioneers the study of cell polarity and planar cell polarity (PCP) proteins to support spermatogenesis. He has also pioneered in the study of Adjudin and related compounds for male contraception, including the use of toxicant and pharmaceutical models to study the biology of spermatogenesis and male infertility. His current studies focus on the biology of human spermatogenesis. Dr. Cheng has published over 500 scientific papers in leading journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Nature Reviews Endocrinology, Physiological Reviews, Pharmacological Reviews, Endocrine Reviews, PNAS, FASEB Journal, Endocrinology, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Fertility and Sterility, Human Molecular Genetics, Cell Death and Disease, Cell Reports, Cell Discovery, and others. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Spermatogenesis and served on the Editorial Board of the journal Endocrinology, Asian Journal of Andrology, and Andrology. He has edited five books, and he is the inventor of numerous U.S. patents including a patent on Adjudin.  Fei Sun is a Distinguished Professor of Zhejiang University in Reproductive Medicine, and a Chief Physician in Andrology. He is also the vice-President of Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine. Dr. Sun is the recipient of the prestigious National Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the National 973 Project, the National Key Research and Development Program of China, and the Hundred Talent Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He serves as the Associate Editors for Molecular Human Reproduction, Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, and Asian Journal of Andrology. His research focuses on clinical and basic research of male infertility, espe-cially on genetic and epigenetic regulation of spermato-genesis. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed research articles, including Am J Hum Genet, Hum Mol Genet, Cell Discovery, and 15 of these studies were selected as the cover illustration. He also co-edited the book, Molecular Mechanisms in Spermatogenesis (Springer, 2021). He won the second prize of National Natural Science Award, the first prize of Scientific and Technological Achievements of the First Maternal and Child Health Science and Technology Award, the honorary title of the third National Famous Doctor-Outstanding Achievements, the Outstanding Youth Contribution Award of the first Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine and the France Talent Innovation Award. Until now, he has presided a number of national science and technology programs such as the National Key Research and development program.