Weill Cornell Medicine has received a three-year, nearly $6 million grant to steer one among three national contraceptive research centers. The grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a part of the National Institutes of Health, will fund the Weill Cornell Medicine Contraception Development Research Center. Led by Drs. Jochen Buck and Lonny Levin, each professors of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine, the middle will concentrate on developing an on-demand male contraceptive.
It’s an honor to be chosen for a second time for this award. It can help us take the following steps within the years-long strategy of bringing a brand new contraceptive choice to the general public.”
Dr. Lonny Levin, professor of pharmacology, Weill Cornell Medicine
Currently, females have many contraceptive options available to them, including taking hormonal pills or having an intrauterine device inserted, though they are sometimes poorly tolerated or inconvenient. The one male contraceptive options are condoms or vasectomies. But a study published by Dr. Buck and Levin earlier this yr in Nature Communications demonstrated that a single dose of a drug candidate that inhibits an enzyme called soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) immobilizes sperm for as much as two and a half hours and prevents pregnancy in mice.
“Our idea is to develop a brand new type of on-demand contraception,” Dr. Buck explained. “The person takes the pill a half hour before having sex after which shall be protected against impregnating someone for eight to 12 hours. Afterwards his fertility returns to normal.”
The funding from the Contraceptive Development Research Center Program at NICHD will help support three distinct projects to advance progress toward developing sAC inhibitor-based male contraceptives and an administrator to oversee the work.
One project will concentrate on improving the present drug candidate to make it suitable for humans. This candidate was developed and tested in a preclinical model in collaboration with the Sanders Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute (TDI), a relationship fostered by the Weill Cornell Medicine Enterprise Innovation office. The Sanders Tri-I TDI, led by Dr. Peter Meinke, works with investigators from Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University to expedite early-stage drug discovery.
The second project will concentrate on developing additional compounds which have similar contraceptive effects. The third project will help the middle test its compounds in a second preclinical model that more closely mimics human reproduction.
“We wish to be sure that we’re starting with one of the best possible compound before we embark on clinical trials,” Dr. Levin said.