A team of scientists have developed an oral male contraceptive that will expand birth control options — as well as responsibilities — for men, AFP reports.
 
The birth control pill was found to be 99 per cent effective in mice, without causing side effects, and could enter human trials by the end of this year, according to the information presented to the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting on Wednesday.

According to Md Abdullah Al Noman, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, since the female birth control pill was first approved in the 1960s, researchers have been interested in a male equivalent.
 
He was quoted as saying, “Multiple studies showed that men are interested in sharing the responsibility of birth control with their partners.”
 
However, there have been only two effective options available: condoms or irreversible vasectomies.
 
They noted that the female pill uses hormones to disrupt the menstrual cycle, and historic efforts to develop a male equivalent targeted the male sex hormone testosterone.
 
However, the problem with this approach was that it caused side effects such as weight gain, depression and increased levels of cholesterol known as low-density lipoprotein, which increases heart disease risks.
 
The female pill also carries side effects, including blood-clotting risks — but since women face becoming pregnant in the absence of contraception, the risk calculation differs.
 
To develop a non-hormonal drug, Noman, who works in the lab of Professor Gunda Georg, targeted a protein called “retinoic acid receptor (RAR) alpha.”
 
Inside the body, vitamin A is converted into different forms, including retinoic acid, which plays important role in cell growth, sperm formation, and embryo development.
 
Retinoic acid needs to interact with RAR-alpha to perform these functions, and lab experiments have shown mice without the gene that creates RAR-alpha are sterile.
 
For their work, Noman and Georg developed a compound that blocks the action of RAR-alpha. They identified the best molecular structure with the help of a computer model.
 
“If we know what the keyhole looks like, then we can make a better key — that’s where the computational model comes in,” said Noman.
 
Their chemical, known as YCT529, was also designed to interact specifically with RAR-alpha, and not two other related receptors RAR-beta and RAR-gamma, to minimize potential side effects.
 
When administered orally to male mice for four weeks, YCT529 drastically reduced sperm counts and was 99 per cent effective in preventing pregnancy, without any observed adverse events.
 
The mice could once more sire pups four to six weeks after they were taken off the drug.
 
The team, which received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Male Contraceptive Initiative, is working with a company called YourChoice Therapeutics to start human trials by the third or fourth quarter of 2022, said Georg.
 
“I’m optimistic this will move forward quickly,” she said, envisaging a possible timeline to market in five years or under.
 
“There is no guarantee that it will work…but I would really be surprised if we didn’t see an effect in humans as well,” she added.