Sonia Gayete-Lafuente, MD, PhD

About

Gayete-Lafuente holds two doctorates — an MD and a PhD — and works at CHR in both registers at once: as an attending physician seeing patients and as a scientist on the center’s translational programs in ovarian aging, androgen and immune endocrinology, and IVF outcomes. The CHR team page has carried her under the parallel title of Fertility Medical Scientist, which is the clearest short description of the role.

Her clinical training was completed on both sides of the Atlantic. She took obstetrics and gynecology and then reproductive endocrinology and infertility subspecialty training in Barcelona, Spain, followed by advanced fellowships at Yale University School of Medicine focused on fertility preservation, ovarian insufficiency and complex endocrine conditions. She joined CHR and the not-for-profit Foundation for Reproductive Medicine as a Physician-Scientist Fellow before moving into her current attending and education role.

She is also the center’s Director of Medical Education, the position responsible for how CHR’s teaching and physician training are organized — a role that fits a center whose published output is close to 500 peer-reviewed papers under its medical director alone. Her own publication record runs to 21 indexed papers under her author name on PubMed, and she works as a scientific reviewer and lecturer for peer-reviewed journals. In patient care she covers the preservation side of the practice: egg, embryo and ovarian tissue freezing for cancer patients, for children, and for men, alongside IVF for women whose ovarian function declined early.

Clinical Expertise

• Fertility preservation — egg and embryo freezing and ovarian tissue preservation, offered to patients facing gonadotoxic chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and to those who need to delay parenthood; CHR is one of the centers licensed to freeze eggs and ovarian tissue.
• Premature ovarian insufficiency and early menopause — evaluation of women whose ovarian function declines in their thirties or earlier, distinguishing premature ovarian aging, where conception remains possible, from premature ovarian failure, where egg production has stopped.
• Complex endocrine conditions with infertility — thyroid disease, PCOS and other endocrine disorders where the hormonal problem and the fertility problem have to be managed together; this was a named focus of her Yale advanced fellowship.
• Ovarian aging research applied to the clinic — translational work on why the ovary ages, feeding the androgen priming and individualized stimulation protocols the center uses in low responders.
• Androgen and immune endocrinology — DHEA and testosterone pathways and immune contributions to poor oocyte quality and repeated loss, the two research threads CHR is best known for.
• IVF and reproductive immunology in practice — cycle management for patients with low reserve, within the center’s evidence-first stance on add-ons and genetic testing.

Why Choose Dr. Gayete-Lafuente

• An MD-PhD on the clinical staff. Physician-scientists are uncommon in private fertility practice; her presence means the center’s research programs and its patient-facing protocols are supervised by someone who works in both. It is also the reason CHR’s preservation and ovarian aging work has a clinical owner rather than being literature reviewed by others.
• Two training systems, both subspecialty-level. Barcelona produced her OB/GYN and reproductive endocrinology credentials; Yale added advanced fellowship work in fertility preservation and ovarian insufficiency. The European training is directly relevant to preservation, since ovarian tissue freezing has been in routine European use longer than in the United States.
• She runs medical education at the center. As Director of Medical Education she is responsible for how CHR trains and teaches, which for a patient is a proxy for how systematically protocols are explained, documented and updated inside the clinic.
• Her research is searchable, not self-described. Twenty-one PubMed records under her author name, plus work as a scientific reviewer for peer-reviewed journals — reviewing is the role that requires keeping current with methods rather than results alone.
• A woman physician-scientist with an international background, which the center notes shapes an advocacy-driven approach to women’s health; patients with endocrine disease plus infertility often report having to argue for that connection elsewhere.
• Care available in Spanish. She trained and practiced in Spain before moving to New York, adding a language path for patients from Spain and Latin America, in a center whose staff roster already covers Mandarin and Cantonese, Russian, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Georgian, Romanian, Japanese, Tagalog, German and Hebrew.

Professional Affiliations

Gayete-Lafuente is board-trained in obstetrics and gynecology with subspecialty qualification in reproductive endocrinology and infertility from the Spanish system, followed by advanced fellowship training at Yale University School of Medicine. She came to the Center for Human Reproduction as a Physician-Scientist Fellow affiliated with both CHR and the Foundation for Reproductive Medicine, the research foundation its medical director also heads, and is now an attending and the Director of Medical Education. She publishes in peer-reviewed journals and serves as a scientific reviewer and invited lecturer.

Suitable For

• Egg freezing before cancer treatment. Preservation has to be arranged quickly and coordinated with oncology, and the window determines the protocol. CHR’s program covers eggs, embryos, ovarian tissue and sperm, with freezing done under the center’s own laboratory license.
• Fertility preservation when delaying parenthood. Women planning later pregnancy who want an evidence-based view of what freezing can and cannot do, from a physician whose research is ovarian aging itself rather than cycle volume.
• Premature ovarian insufficiency and early menopause. The distinction matters clinically — premature ovarian aging still leaves a path to conception, premature ovarian failure does not — and her research and Yale fellowship both concentrate on identifying which side of that line a patient is on and what stimulation or androgen priming can still achieve.
• Complex endocrine disease with infertility. Thyroid, adrenal and PCOS-related problems where treating the endocrine disorder and pursuing pregnancy have to be sequenced together; this was a named training focus and remains a research line at CHR.
• Patients who want to understand why the ovary ages. Families and patients asking for mechanism, not just instruction, are the natural audience for a physician-scientist who publishes on ovarian aging and reviews the literature for journals.
• Spanish-speaking patients. Consultation and explanation in Spanish, in a center that arranges interpretation for other languages and hosts international patients for four- to six-day IVF stays.