Sherman Silber

Silber graduated medical school from the University of Michigan in 1966, and thereafter completed post-graduate training in cardiac surgery at both Stanford University and University of Michigan.[1][5]

Before completing his residency, Silber worked as a gynecologist for the U.S. Public Health Service in Alaska.[6] He served as a village urologist for two years before returning the University of Michigan to study urology and transplantation.[5] Silber became interested in microsurgical techniques for kidney transplantation. He took academic posts at the University of Melbourne Medical School in Australia and then the University of California Medical School in San Francisco.

While in Australia in 1975, Silber performed the world’s first microsurgical vasectomy reversal and popularized the microscopic vasovasostomy.[5][7][8] In 1976, Silber moved to St. Louis, Missouri, his wife’s hometown, and joined St. Luke’s Hospital. In 1978, he reported the first testicle transplant between two twin brothers.[9][10]

In the 1990s, Silber and his colleagues at St. Luke’s worked with a team at Brussels University to develop intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in which a single sperm is selected to be microscopically injected into an egg. This procedure is coupled with the sperm retrieval method developed by Silber, which involves a single sperm retrieved by microsurgery directly from a patient’s epidycimus.[10][11]

Beginning in 1996, Silber began experimenting with freezing ovarian tissue to regraft into the ovaries of cancer patients who have compromised fertility after chemotherapy and radiation. In 2004, he successfully transplanted frozen ovarian tissue.[10] In 2007, Silber completed the first successful whole ovary transplant. The surgery was performed at his clinic in St. Louis, Missouri.[12]

As of 2014, Silber had removed, frozen, and replaced ovarian tissue in twelve women and done a series of ovarian tissue transplants in nine sets of identical twins. That year, he also traveled to China to complete China’s first ovarian-tissue transplant.[8]

In 2013, Silber became the medical director of the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has used his expertise to treat patients from around the world.[13] Over his career, Silber has collaborated with medical research teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Amsterdam, and the Kato Clinic in Tokyo,[1] and has published more than 250 scientific papers and more than 50 teaching videos.[13]