NEW SCIENTIST – A drug that temporarily paralyses sperm could become the first on-demand male birth control pill.
In mice, the contraceptive was 100 per cent effective at preventing pregnancy for about 2 hours, with full fertility returning 24 hours later.
“This is, in the male contraceptive field, totally revolutionary,” says Jochen Buck at Cornell University in New York.
Most other prospective male contraceptives in clinical development are only effective after eight to 12 weeks, he says.
Previous research has shown that sperm require a protein called soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) to move, and that men who cannot produce sAC due to rare genetic mutations are infertile.
So, Buck and his colleagues assessed whether a drug inhibiting sAC could be used as a male contraceptive. If sperm are immobile, they can’t travel up the vaginal tract to fertilise an egg …
“We need more [birth control] options, and men need an option so that the burden of contraception is not on females anymore,” says Balbach.
“We’re very optimistic that once men take the inhibitor, it will have the same effect.” …
Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36119-6
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