Women have been largely in charge of making sure unwanted pregnancies don’t happen unexpectedly due to the availability of various forms of contraception.
While men have the obvious choice of using condoms or in extreme cases going for the snip (and there have been talks of a future pill-form for men), other potentially affective options are in research stage.
Wired recently highlighted two new male birth control potentials: H2-gamendazole and JQ1.
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H2-gamendazole is currently being tested on animals and would essentially prevent sperm from fully maturing. The compound prevents premature sperm cells from growing a head and a tail in the testis, leaving the unfinished fragments to be reabsorbed and never ending up in sperm.
“If there’s no sperm, the egg’s not going to get fertilized,” said Joseph Tash, a reproductive biologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He has worked on the compound since 2001.
The FDA reviewed H2-gamendazole a couple of years ago and determined that further research would need to be done to determine how it could affect a woman’s body if the compound still remains in the semen.
The JQ1 molecule, which is in the chemical optimization stage of the research, works to block bromodomain proteins and was discovered for use as potential birth control on accident. Jay Bradner and his team at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute were working on figuring out how to block these proteins, which Bradner refers to as “Post-it notes that cells place around the genome to remind them of their identity.”
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JQ1 has been used to block bromodomain in cancer cells – essentially causing the cells to not “know” they were cancer cells. It has also been used to block testicle-specific bromodomain called BRDT. So far it has worked in mice, but in order for the drug to be available, researchers must find a version of the molecule that doesn’t mess with any other bromodomain proteins – only the testicle-specific proteins.
