Norbert Gleicher, MD, FACOG, FACS

About

In 1983 a paper in The Lancet described the first successful transvaginal egg retrieval anywhere in the world. Its author was Norbert Gleicher, who had organized an international congress on reproductive immunology at Mount Sinai while still a chief resident. That technique — a needle guided through the vaginal wall rather than laparoscopy — is now how eggs are retrieved in almost every IVF laboratory, and it is one entry in a career that has produced close to 500 peer-reviewed papers.

Gleicher founded the Center for Human Reproduction in Chicago in 1981, establishing the first IVF program in Chicago and the Midwest while serving as Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mount Sinai Hospital and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Immunology/Microbiology at Rush Medical College. He has been President, Medical and Laboratory Director and Chief Scientist at CHR in New York since 1999, and is concurrently President of the not-for-profit Foundation for Reproductive Medicine, a Visiting Research Scientist at Rockefeller University, and a Visiting Professor at the Medical University of Vienna, where he began his medical studies before completing them at Tel Aviv University Medical School. He holds adjunct academic rank and served 20 years as founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer, renamed two years later the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics (JARG).

His clinical practice concentrates on the patients other centers deprioritize: women over 40, premature ovarian aging, immunological infertility and repeated loss. CHR’s own patient mix reflects that — the CDC recorded 529 ART cycles there in 2022, 74.3% of them in patients over 40. Gleicher speaks English, German, Hebrew and Polish, and has been named a top physician by both Chicago Magazine and The New York Times Magazine.

Clinical Expertise

• IVF for advanced maternal age — individualized stimulation protocols rather than standard doses, on the premise that older ovaries need different handling; CHR reports pregnancies with own eggs up to age 47 and a delivery at 48.
• Premature ovarian aging and diminished reserve — ovarian reserve testing, hormone assessment and immune evaluation to find the reason a pregnancy is difficult, rather than accepting an “unexplained infertility” label; Gleicher has argued that unexplained infertility signals incomplete evaluation.
• Reproductive immunology — autoimmune and alloimmune contributions to infertility and recurrent miscarriage, including ANA-positive patients and thyroid-related loss; he was the first Vice-President of the American Society for Reproductive Immunology.
• DHEA and androgen supplementation — DHEA brought into fertility care at CHR in 2005 to shift the ovarian environment toward a more androgen-rich state before stimulation, given as oral tablets from at least six weeks before a cycle; testosterone in low responders remains an active study there.
• Selective use of genetic testing — PGD for a defined medical indication, with published arguments against routine PGS/PGT-A, including a 2013 report that IVF success-rate metrics were being manipulated, which contributed to revised CDC and SART reporting guidance.
• Egg donation when it is genuinely indicated — CHR runs its own donor database and shared risk and frozen donor egg programs, and considers donor eggs a last step for many of the women who were offered them first elsewhere.

Why Choose Dr. Gleicher

• He is a documented origin point for how eggs are collected. The 1983 Lancet report on transvaginal retrieval is the reason egg collection no longer required laparoscopy. For a patient, that history matters less as prestige than as evidence that this practice has been run by someone who changed the technique itself, not just adopted it.
• His research standing is independently ranked. ScholarGPS placed him in the top 0.05% of scholars worldwide in 2024, third lifetime in ovarian reserve, in the top 10 lifetime in reproductive biology, and fourth in assisted reproductive technology over the preceding five years. PubMed returns 289 records for his name with a CHR affiliation, a filterable third-party check rather than a self-reported count.
• He works the low-responder problem with supplements that have trial support. DHEA at CHR was studied in registered trials (NCT00650754 in unexplained infertility with premature ovarian aging, NCT00948857 in premature ovarian failure), and micronized DHEA for fertility was developed there. Patients who want androgen supplementation usually have to ask for it elsewhere; here it is the house protocol.
• He publishes the case against add-ons. Rather than bundling PGT-A, immune treatments and other expensive extras, CHR states that it only recommends treatments and tests supported by solid evidence, and Gleicher has published on screening adding cost without proven benefit in this age group.
• He has held the editorial chairs in both of his fields. Founding Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Reproductive Immunology and of JARG for 20 years means the literature in reproductive immunology was partly shaped by him, and the clinic’s protocols are argued from that literature.
• Recognition outside the US clinic system. The Dr. Solomon Silver Award in Clinical Medicine from Mount Sinai, the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1991, and the British Fertility Society’s Patrick Steptoe Memorial Lecture in 2009 — a lecture reserved for IVF pioneers, named after the man who performed the first successful IVF birth.

Professional Affiliations

Gleicher is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and holds membership in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, SART, The Endocrine Society and ESHRE. He was the first Vice-President of the American Society for Reproductive Immunology, formed after the international congress he organized at Mount Sinai, and remains on the editorial boards of several journals including the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, RBM Online, the Asian Pacific Journal of Reproduction, Endocrine, the Journal of Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, the Journal of Translational Medicine, Clinical and Translational Medicine and The Journal of IVF-Worldwide. Since 1990 he has held professorial appointments at Chicago Medical School, New York University School of Medicine and Yale University School of Medicine, and he is a Visiting Research Scientist at Rockefeller University and a Visiting Professor at the Medical University of Vienna.

Suitable For

• Women pursuing IVF at 40 and older. This is the practice’s core population rather than an exception, so protocols are built for older ovaries: higher gonadotropin doses, androgen priming before the cycle, and monitoring adjusted to response. Over half of CHR’s fresh non-donor cycles involve women aged 42 and up.
• Diminished ovarian reserve and premature ovarian aging. Roughly 82.8% of CHR’s 2022 CDC-reported cycles carried a low-reserve or premature-aging diagnosis. Patients with two or fewer eggs after stimulation, or who failed to respond while already taking DHEA, are the cases this protocol was designed for.
• Immunological infertility and autoimmune-related loss. Few centers treat reproductive immunology as a primary clinical service; it is the field Gleicher trained in and founded journals around. ANA positivity, thyroid autoimmunity and steroid support in the first trimester fall to this part of practice.
• Repeated IVF failure and recurrent miscarriage. CHR asks for prior cycle records and embryology reports precisely so failed protocols can be reconstructed, and its consecutive-cycle approach in low responders is aimed at building cumulative egg and embryo numbers across cycles.
• Patients told donor eggs are their only option. The clinic states most of its patients were given that advice before arriving, and the diagnostic workup — ovarian reserve, hormones, immune evaluation, history review — exists to test whether an own-egg path is still available. Patients who want that second look, including by written remote second opinion, are served here.