This week, researchers in the United Kingdom began testing a first-of-its-kind non-hormonal male birth control pill, paving the way for responsibility for contraception to be equally shared between the sexes. According to Sky News, Quotient Sciences, a drug development company based in Nottingham, began its phase I trial of YCT-529, a male birth control pill, this week, with 16 British men.
YCT-529, unlike the female pill, is hormone-free and prevents sperm production by blocking vitamin A access. Previous research spanning more than 90 years has shown that depriving mice, rats, and monkeys of vitamin A can result in infertility.
Scientists hope that this new pill will give men more power to prevent unwanted pregnancies, as women have traditionally carried the majority of the responsibility for preventing pregnancy. Male options for preventing unwanted pregnancies are currently limited to withdrawal, condoms, and vasectomy, whereas female options include the pill, coil, contraceptive injection, and female condoms or diaphragms.
According to experts at its manufacturer, YourChoice Therapeutics, based in San Francisco, YCT-529 is “99% effective and 100% reversible, with no side effects” in pre-clinical studies.
”YCT-529 blocks a protein—not hormones—to prevent sperm production. We believe this will be more attractive to men, most of whom view pregnancy prevention as a shared responsibility even despite today’s limited contraceptive options, which are permanent or only moderately effective.”
YourChoice Therapeutics aims to shift contraceptive responsibility and develop the first effective, hormone-free male birth control pill
The scarcity of options reinforces the centuries-old belief that pregnancy prevention is solely the responsibility of women. It isn’t, and we’re committed to developing the first hormone-free birth control pill for men that is effective, convenient, and temporary,” YourChoice Therapeutics co-founder and CEO Akash Bakshi said in a statement.
Gunda Georg, regents professor at the University of Minnesota’s College of Pharmacy, who developed the pill, told The Independent, ”The last innovation in contraception was the birth control pill for women, and that’s more than 60 years ago. The world is ready for a male contraceptive agent, and delivering one that’s hormone-free is simply the right thing to do given what we know about the side effects women have endured for decades from the pill.”
”We consciously chose to inhibit the vitamin A signaling pathway in the testis because nearly 100 years of research has validated this pathway and shows that infertility can be reversed easily,” she added. This clinical trial is expected to end in June 2024, as per Forbes.
