Monday, October 30, 2006

New Male Contraceptive Wipes Out Our Swimmers

Filed under: Reproductive Medicine

Interesting new research from the Population Council's Center for Biomedical Research explores a non-hormonal approach to prevent sperm from reaching maturation, inducing temporary infertility.

The first generation of male contraceptives will likely employ hormones to block spermatic development. Such products are currently undergoing extensive clinical testing. But for men who don't want to alter their sex hormones over the long haul, researchers are exploring a variety of nonhormonal options based on sperm biology. One avenue involves proteins called adherens, which allow sperm to attach to specialized cells in the testes. Similar to the brain, the testes do not allow blood to flow inside. To make up for the lack of circulatory nourishment, sperm cells adhere to so-called Sertoli cells, which provide the nutrients a growing sperm needs to reach maturity.

Biomedical researchers at the Population Council identified a compound that interferes with adherens. Initially, some rodents that were fed the drug, dubbed Adjudin, experienced inflamed livers and muscle deterioration. In a Nature Medicine paper published online October 29 the researchers report they linked Adjudin to an engineered version of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), a sex hormone recognized by receptors found only on the Sertoli cells. That way the Adjudin is dragged with FSH directly to the testes and spends less time circulating in the rest of the body, says senior team member Yan Cheng. As a result, much less of the compound is needed to reduce fertility in rodents, the group reports. The drug still needs several years of animal testing before a human trial is conceivable, Cheng says.

Read more at Scientific American. . .

Check out the abstract . . .

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