First modification:
Still tested only on animals, this new drug inhibits the ability of sperm to move for several hours. If shown to work in humans, it could pave the way for a male contraceptive that does not use hormone therapy and whose effects are rapidly reversible.
The world has been waiting for a male contraceptive drug for decades. Apart from condoms and a vasectomy, there are no alternatives for all people with a penis who don’t want to risk pregnancy. Thus, the responsibility for preventing it often falls disproportionately on women, for whom there are a myriad of contraceptive options, ranging from condoms to hormonal therapies.
But on February 14, an option was announced that, although it is still far from being found in pharmacies, could change this paradigm. A team from Weill Cornell Medicine, in collaboration with Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, developed a potential sperm contraceptive treatment.
The mechanism is ingenious: Scientists developed a molecule called TDI-11861, in a long chemical engineering effort, that inhibits a key sperm protein. This is soluble adenyl cyclase (sAC), which allows sperm to move.
By inhibiting this protein, which is present in other organs and tissues but which is expressed in a particular way in mammalian spermatozoa, it prevents the spermatozoa from being able to travel to the uterus once ejaculated in the vagina, making fertilization impossible and hence the pregnancy.
The idea of this team of scientists is to administer the molecule through an oral drug that is taken shortly before sexual intercourse, between half an hour and an hour before penetration. The inhibitor keeps the sperm completely immobile for up to three hours after the administration of the treatment. After three hours, the sperm begins to recover mobility and, after 24 hours, the effect fades completely.
For now, the experiments have only been carried out on animals, particularly mice. But the results are promising: In the mice that received the treatment, there were no pregnancies despite 52 matings. In contrast, a third of sexual intercourse in untreated mice ended in pregnancy.
The road to possible commercialization of this drug for people is far away. First, preclinical studies must begin to prove that the treatment can work in human sperm. Then, at least three stages of clinical studies would follow to show that the method is safe and works, starting with a handful of people and working through testing it on a large sample.
If this path is followed successfully, it will be the first contraceptive treatment that could be obtained in pharmacies on demand, which would have a rapid effect and which, at the same time, would also be reversible in a short period. For now, most male contraceptive projects are hormonal treatments that usually take weeks to take effect, so they, in turn, take weeks to return to normal fertility.
In addition, many of the hormone treatments being studied have strong side effects, just like the hormone treatments many women undergo. However, on a somewhat cynical balance, the cost of side effects is often seen as weighing more heavily in the balance than the benefits, since they are not the ones that get pregnant.
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