Key Points
Before a sperm can fertilize an egg, it faces a long journey: Propelled by the back and forth movement of its tail, it needs to swim all the way through the female reproductive tract to the fallopian tube, where it meets an egg..
But in a new study, researchers who want to develop on-demand male contraceptives say theyve figured out a way to prevent pregnancy: temporarily stop the sperm from swimming...
In apaper published today inNature Communications, the researchers announced that when they injected 52 male mice with an experimental compound called TDI-11861, it temporarily inhibited an enzyme that helps sperm move..
We thought inhibiting this would be a great way to stop sperm in their tracks, prevent them from ever leaving the vagina and getting to the promised land to fertilize an egg.. But injecting a drug before sex isnt exactly an appealing idea, so the researchers also tested an oral version in male mice and confirmed that the drug immobilized sperm when delivered this way..
I think this is really one of the biggest advancements for non-hormonal contraceptives in recent times, says Christopher Lindsey, a program official in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which partly funded the work.. Levin and his collaborator Jochen Buck, also a professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell, didnt initially set out to find a male contraceptive..
