Linda C. Giudice, M.D., Ph.D., and Marco Conti, M.D.

This issue of Seminars in Reproductive Medicine is devoted to the role of growth factors in the development and function of the reproductive organs. The guest editors for this issue are two researchers who have invested a significant amount of their academic careers in this specific area of reproduction. Dr. Linda C. Guidice (a previous guest editor and a current member of the Seminars in Reproductive Medicine editorial board) and Dr. Marco Conti from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, have both agreed to serve as guest editors.

Linda C. Giudice, M.D., Ph.D., joined UCSF in 2005 as the Robert B. Jaffe, M.D., Endowed Professor and Chair of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. Dr. Giudice is a biochemist, gynecologist, and reproductive endocrinologist who specializes in endometriosis, infertility, assisted reproduction, and implantation and ovulatory disorders. Her research includes environmental impacts on reproductive health, human embryonic stem cells differentiating to the trophectoderm, endometrial biology, and placental–uterine interactions. She received her B.S. from Columbia University, her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California Los Angeles, and her M.D. from Stanford University. As a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, Dr. Giudice worked under Nobel laureate Gunter Blobel. Dr. Giudice completed residencies in obstetrics-gynecology at both Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis, followed by a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Stanford University. She was on the faculty at Stanford University for 19 years and was founding director of the Center for Research on Reproduction, Women's Health and Genomic Medicine and the Women's Health @ Stanford Program, as well as director of the Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Division. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her work, including, most recently, the 2008 President's Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for Gynecologic Investigation and 2008 Women in Science Award from the American Medical Women's Association. In 2002, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Her laboratory has extensively investigated growth factors, the ovary, and the endometrium in physiological and pathophysiological conditions.

Marco Conti, M.D., is director of the Center for Reproductive Sciences and professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California in San Francisco. Dr. Conti's major research interests include cell signaling, gonadotropin mechanism of action, and signaling involved in oocyte and sperm maturation. He received his M.D. degree in 1974 from the University of Rome followed by postdoctoral work at the NIH-NIHD, Bethesda, Maryland, under the supervision of Kevin Catt. He then returned to the University of Rome as assistant professor in 1978. In 1985, Dr. Conti returned to the United States to join the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, first as a visiting professor and then as an associate professor on the faculty with a joint appointment in pediatrics and physiology. In 1992, he joined the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stanford University, rising to the rank of tenured full professor before leaving for UCSF in 2007.

Readers of Seminars in Reproductive Medicine will find this overview of the role of growth factors in reproduction an excellent resource for further investigation and research.