Advances and Challenges in Oncofertility, from Bench to Bedside

Oncofertility has become an essential component of comprehensive cancer care, bridging reproductive medicine, oncology, surgery, pediatrics, endocrinology, psychology, and basic science. Improvements in cancer survival have made future fertility, gonadal function, pregnancy, and parenthood increasingly relevant outcomes for patients diagnosed with cancer at any age. Established strategies such as oocyte, embryo, sperm, and ovarian tissue cryopreservation are now widely implemented, yet important gaps remain in access, counselling, patient selection, outcome prediction, and long-term follow-up. At the same time, the rapid evolution of anticancer treatments, including targeted therapies and immunotherapies, raises new questions regarding gonadotoxicity and reproductive safety. Translational advances are reshaping the field, but require careful clinical evaluation.This Special Issue aims to provide an updated, multidisciplinary overview of the most relevant advances and unresolved challenges in oncofertility, from experimental models to clinical implementation. The goal is to collect high-quality contributions that clarify how fertility preservation can be optimized for children, adolescents, and young adults with cancer, and how reproductive outcomes should be assessed in survivors.Particular attention will be given to strategies that improve individualized counselling, including predictors of success, treatment-related gonadotoxicity, timing of fertility preservation, and the role of fertility preservation after chemotherapy. The Special Issue also seeks to highlight areas where evidence remains limited or controversial, such as ovarian tissue cryopreservation in leukemia, fertility preservation in gynecological cancers, and testicular tissue cryopreservation in prepubertal boys. By integrating clinical experience, translational research, and critical reviews, this collection aims to support more precise, informed, equitable, and patient-centered reproductive care in oncology.• How to optimize current options of fertility preservation in pre- and post-pubertal patients diagnosed with cancer (preclinical hypotheses, novel strategies, clinical predictors of success, reporting of experiences, …) • Gonadotoxicity of therapies, especially targeted therapies and immunotherapies• Reproductive outcomes in female and male cancer survivors, particularly pediatric cancer survivors • Novel strategies for fertility preservation: for example, testicular tissue cryopreservation and reimplantation in pre-pubertal boys, from animal models to clinical application• Current unsolved challenges in fertility preservation: for example, ovarian tissue cryopreservation in leukemia patients, oocytes in vitro maturation to increase the number of MII to cryopreserve • Fertility preservation strategies for patients affected by gynecological tumors: fertility sparing surgery, role of cryopreservation techniques• Is there a role for post-chemotherapy fertility preservation?Please note that manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public omics databases that are not supplemented by relevant functional validation (clinical cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this Research Topic. Topic editors: Andrea Amaroli, Claudia Massarotti, Omar Ammar Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81841/advances-and-challenges-in-oncofertility-from-bench-to-bedside