Male contraceptives: Discovery of natural compounds with 'ideal' contraceptive effects

In a paper published in Nature Communications, Lundquist Institute (TLI) researcher Wei Yan, Ph.

Dr.

The compound is triptolide, which can be purified from a Chinese herbal medicine called triptolide or produced by chemical synthesis

"Thanks to decades of basic research, this inspired the idea that a compound targeting a key protein in the last few steps of sperm assembly would lead to the production of non-functioning sperm without causing severe depletion of testicular cells, " said Dr.

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Reference: “Triptonide is a reversible non-hormonal male contraceptive agent in mice and non-human primates” by Zongliang Chang, Weibing Qin, Huili Zheng, Kathleen Schegg, Lu Han, Xiaohua Liu, Yue Wang, Zhuqing Wang, Hayden McSwiggin, Hong Peng, Shuiqiao Yuan, Jiabao Wu, Yongxia Wang, Shenghui Zhu, Yanjia Jiang, Hua Nie, Yuan Tang, Yu Zhou, Michael JM Hitchcock, Yunge Tang and Wei Yan, 23 February 2021, Nature Communications .