Ever since the pill for women was approved in the 1960s, researchers have been interested in developing a male contraceptive pill.
A team of scientists reported this Wednesday (03.23.2022) to have developed a male contraceptive pill which showed a 99% effective in mice without side effects and could start human trials by the end of the year.
The contraceptive findings will be presented at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society and mark a milestone in the provision of birth control methods and responsibilities for men.
A third method apart from condoms and vasectomy
Ever since the birth control pill for women was approved in the 1960s, researchers have been interested in developing its male equivalent.
“Multiple studies show that men are interested in sharing contraceptive responsibility with their partners,” the doctor told the AFP agency Abdullah Al Noman, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, in charge of presenting this research. But so far, only condoms and vasectomy are among the effective methods available for men.
In the case of vasectomy, reversible surgery is expensive and not always successful.
side effects of pills
The female pill uses hormones to alter the menstrual cycle, and historical efforts to develop a male equivalent have focused on the hormone testosterone.
The problem with this approach, however, is that it has side effects like weight gain, depression, and increased cholesterol levels known as low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which increases the risks of heart disease.
The female pill also carries side effects, including risks of blood clotting, but when faced with the possibility of becoming pregnant in the absence of a contraceptive method, the calculation of the risk differs.
non-hormonal method
To develop a non-hormonal approach, Noman, who works in Professor Gunda Georg’s lab, focused on a protein called “retinoic acid receptor (RAR) alpha”.
Within the body, vitamin A is processed in several ways, including retinoic acid, which plays an important role in cell growth, sperm formation, and embryonic development.
Retinoic acid needs to interact with RAR-alpha to perform these functions, and laboratory experiments have shown that mice without the gene that creates the RAR-alpha receptor are sterile.
For their work, Noman and Georg developed a compound that blocks the action of RAR-alpha. They identified the best molecular structure with the help of a computer model.
“If we know what the keyhole looks like, then we can make a better key, that’s where computer modeling comes in,” Noman explained.
Its chemical compound, known as YCT529was also designed to act specifically with the receiver RAR-alphaand not with other related receptors such as RAR-beta and RAR-gamma, in order to avoid possible side effects as much as possible.
Male birth control pill in mice
Being administered orally in mice for four weeks, YCT529 dramatically lowered your sperm count and was 99% effective at preventing pregnancy no observable adverse effects.
The mice were able to return to fertility 4 to 6 weeks after stopping the drug.
The research team, which received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Male Contraception Initiative, is working with a company called YourChoice Therapeutics to start human trials in the third or fourth quarter of 2022.
“I am optimistic that we will move forward quickly,” said Professor Gunda Georg, considering a time to market of about five years or less. “There is no guarantee that it will work, but it would be really surprising if we didn’t see an effect in humans as well,” she added.