Cornell Researchers Developing On-Demand Male Contraceptive
February 15th, 2023Most media are simply focusing on an eventual male birth control pill, but look at the research that has gone into this so far:
Drs. Buck and Levin did not initially set out to find a male contraceptive. They were friends and colleagues with complementary skill sets. But when Dr. Levin challenged Dr. Buck to isolate an important cellular signaling protein called soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) that had long eluded biochemists, Dr. Buck couldn’t resist. It took him two years. Drs. Buck and Levin then shifted their research focus to studying sAC and eventually merged their laboratories.
The team discovered that mice genetically engineered to lack sAC are infertile. Then in 2018, Dr. Melanie Balbach, a postdoctoral associate in their lab, made an exciting discovery while working on sAC inhibitors as a possible treatment for an eye condition. She found that mice that were given a drug that inactivates sAC produce sperm that cannot propel themselves forward. The team was reassured that sAC inhibition might be a safe contraceptive option by another team’s report that men who lacked the gene encoding sAC were infertile but otherwise healthy.
Wowzers.
I never got around to writing it, but long ago, in the spirit of Rainbox Six, I envisioned a story that involved a sort of binary bioweapon. If a man drinks a soda containing compound A by itself, he doesn’t become infertile. If he eats a candy bar containing compound B by itself, he doesn’t become infertile. But if he consumes products containing both compound A and compound B within a few hours, he would be infertile for a week, a month or whatever.
The SPECTRE-type group gives up on eat-ze-bugs, etc. and switches to sprinkling these additives in things that sit under heat lamps in gas stations and drop out of vending machines.
It would be very insidious and difficult to find. Medical professionals would shrug shoulders and tell people having infertility problems that they were unlucky. Researchers who got close would commit suicide, etc.
I researched the topic a bit and determined that it wouldn’t make for that thrilling of a story, because it already happened in one way or another. Count Down by Shanna H. Swan is a recent summary of the trend that has been in place for decades.
Anyway, I wonder if common processed food ingredients and/or environmental pollutants inhibit soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC)? You know, an unfortunate coincidence, perhaps?
Could an mRNA “vaccine” be developed to cause men to produce TDI-11861 themselves?
Hmm.
Via: Cornell:
An experimental contraceptive drug candidate developed by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators temporarily stops sperm in their tracks and prevents pregnancies in preclinical models. The study, published in Nature Communications on Feb. 14, demonstrates that an on-demand male contraceptive is possible.
…
The new Nature Communications study demonstrates that a single dose of a sAC inhibitor called TDI-11861 immobilizes mice sperm for up to two and half hours and that the effects persist in the female reproductive tract after mating. After three hours, some sperm begin regaining motility; by 24 hours, nearly all sperm have recovered normal movement.
TDI-11861-treated male mice paired with female mice exhibited normal mating behavior but did not impregnate females despite 52 different mating attempts. Male mice treated with an inactive control substance, by contrast, impregnated almost one-third of their mates.
“Our inhibitor works within 30 minutes to an hour,” Dr. Balbach said. “Every other experimental hormonal or nonhormonal male contraceptive takes weeks to bring sperm count down or render them unable to fertilize eggs.”
Additionally, Dr. Balbach noted that it takes weeks to reverse the effects of other hormonal and nonhormonal male contraceptives in development. She said that since sAC inhibitors wear off within hours, and men would take it only when, and as often, as needed, they could allow men to make day-to-day decisions about their fertility.
Drs. Balbach and Levin noted that it took substantial medicinal chemistry work to develop TDI-11861, and this was accomplished in partnership with the Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute (TDI). The TDI works with investigators from Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University to expedite early-stage drug discovery.
“Could an mRNA “vaccine” be developed to cause men to produce TDI-11861 themselves?” Now that you point it out, I’m thinking they’re undoubtedly working on it already. And even “better”, if they could just put it in the water, or even the air, “problem” solved.