Male Contraceptive Pill Temporarily Stops Sperm From Swimming To Prevent Pregnancy [Study]

Men could soon have their own "male pill" contraception after an experimental contraceptive drug developed by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators showed promising results.

Experimental Male Contraceptive Pill

Co-senior authors Dr. Jochen Buck and Dr. Lonny Levin, who are professors of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine, experimented, and wanted to give men more options for contraception other than condoms and vasectomies. Since men are not the ones who get pregnant, there are assumptions that they have a low tolerance for potential contraceptive side effects.

Dr. Buck was unable to resist Dr. Levin's challenge to isolate soluble adenyl cyclase (sAC), an important cellular signaling protein that had eluded biochemists for a long time. It took him two years of research before he and Levin subsequently shifted their research focus to sAC and merged their laboratories.

The group discovered that mice engineered to lack sAC are sterile. Dr. Melanie Balbach, a postdoctoral associate in their laboratory, made an exciting discovery in 2018 while working on sAC inhibitors as a potential treatment for an eye condition. She discovered that mice administered a drug that deactivates sAC produce sperm that are incapable of motility. The fact that men lacking the gene encoding sAC were infertile but otherwise healthy reassured the team that sAC inhibition might be a safe method of contraception.

How Does The Male Contraceptive Pill Work

The contraceptive pill works by stopping the sperm from swimming. According to scientists, one of its advantages is that it does not knock out testosterone and cause any male hormone deficiency side effects. The experimental male pill just blocks sAC, BBC reported.

The results could last for around three hours. In the next 24 hours, the new batch of sperm will be swimming normally.

The new study demonstrates that a single dose of the sAC inhibitor TDI-11861 immobilizes mouse sperm for up to 2.5 hours and that the effects persist in the female reproductive tract following mating.

Male mice treated with TDI-11861 and paired with female mice exhibited normal mating behavior but failed to impregnate females despite 52 attempts. In contrast, male mice treated with an inactive placebo impregnated nearly one-third of their mates.

The inhibitor works within 30 minutes to an hour, according to Dr. Balbach. Meanwhile, other experimental hormonal or non-hormonal male contraceptive takes weeks to bring sperm count down or render them unable to fertilize eggs.

What's Next For The Male Contraceptive Pill

Weill Cornell Medicine Enterprise Innovation, the office that accelerates the translation and commercialization of technologies developed by Weill Cornell faculty and trainees, fostered and nurtured the Buck/Levin lab's collaboration with TDI. Moreover, Enterprise Innovation is coordinating the licensing of this discovery to their new company.

Dr. Levin stated that the team is already working to make sAC inhibitors more suitable for human use. Drs. Buck and Levin co-founded Sacyl Pharmaceuticals with Dr. Gregory Kopf, the Chief Scientific Officer of the company.

The team's next step is to repeat their experiments using a different preclinical model. Dr. Buck added that these experiments would pave the way for human clinical trials that would examine the effect of sAC inhibition on sperm motility in healthy males.

If the drug development and clinical trials are successful, the male pill will be available in pharmacies.

The results of the study are published in Nature Communications.

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