Scientists have developed a drug that temporarily paralyzes sperm, which is expected to be the first on-demand male contraceptive pill. In mice, the drug achieved 100% effective contraception within about two hours, and fully restored fertility after 24 hours. The date of publication of the paper happens to be Valentine's Day on February 14th, which is a bit interesting.
There is no need to talk about the need for contraception, data shows that nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unexpected, although this may indeed be a bit exaggerated, but at least the strong demand in this market is indeed obvious. However, for male contraception, in addition to condoms and vasectomy, other methods can not be considered very successful, most of the male contraceptive pills in clinical development, to take effect after 8~12 weeks, this time is long, it is easy to count wrong, and each has its own potential problems, will not expand.
You know, after puberty, a man can produce about 1,000 sperm per second, so for men's contraceptive strategies, it needs to be effective enough to prevent millions of sperm at the same time, and there can be no fish that slip through the net to fertilize oocytes, which is of course difficult!
And this discovery, where is the unique place?
Researchers used an inhibitor called soluble adenylyl cyclase (soluble adenyl cyclase: sAC), the mechanism is too complex to go into detail, simply speaking, sAC is key to sperm power and energy acquisition, many friends know that sperm grow like tadpoles, each pregnancy is the fastest of millions of sperm into the egg, so if the sperm loses power, it is naturally impossible to complete fertilization.
This time, the researchers played with this idea, they designed a more effective sAC inhibitor TDI-11861 than before, which can bind sAC protein well to greatly reduce the concentration of sAC, so that sperm lose kinetic energy, and naturally achieve contraception.
What's more, the researchers found that TDI-11861 is not only not toxic to sperm, but even at oral doses (50mg/kg), sperm are basically stationary for three hours.
You think that's the end of it? No, after three hours, the power of sperm began to recover again, and after 24 hours, it can basically return to the original kinetic energy level, indicating that this process is temporary and reversible, here, you have to say that you have not found its commercial value, it is really stupid.
In another test, the researchers paired 52 male mice with female mice after giving them TDI-11861 for 30 minutes. During the two-hour "passion" time limit, none of the female mice became pregnant. Even if given an extra hour of "passion" time, only 2.2 percent of the mice failed contraception. For the exploration of side effects, no mice showing any side effects have been found even after repeated injections for 6 weeks.
Of course, this research has not yet been carried out on humans, and they will test the optimization in rabbits next, and clinical trials may begin as soon as around 2025. Fellow men, are you already looking forward to it? If you want to squat for a follow-up, just pay attention.