http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2005/01/31/way_seen_to_male_birth_control_pill?mode=PF


WORCESTER -- University of Massachusetts researchers will announce
today that they have discovered a strategy for immobilizing sperm and
have reached an agreement with a Norwegian company to develop a male
contraceptive pill.

The finding is occurring five decades after scientists, also in Central
Massachusetts, devised a formula for a women's birth control pill, one
with worldwide social and sexual repercussions so great that it came to
be known simply as the Pill.

The approach by the UMass Medical School scientists involves turning
off the tiny tails that allow sperm to swim to the female egg for
fertilization. If their theory is right -- and animal studies suggest
it is -- the method could result in a male contraceptive that is easy
to take, free of side effects, and reversible.

UMass has forged a licensing deal with a Norwegian biotech company
called SpermaTech to use this pioneering approach to develop a male
pill, a process that could require a decade of lab work and human
testing.

If the partnership between US and European scientists is successful,
specialists in reproductive health said, it would herald a new era in
sexual relations, with issues of trust, responsibility, and power
unfolding in ways not easily predicted. And the economic consequences
could be significant, too: Last year alone, US doctors wrote 82.5
million prescriptions for oral contraceptives, responsible for $2.8
billion in sales, according to IMS Health, which tracks the
pharmaceutical market. UMass did not disclose the details of the
agreement, but it stands to profit handsomely should a male pill be
developed.

"This would be revolutionary," said Dr. Karen Loeb Lifford, medical
director of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. "The existence
of alternative methods of birth control is exceedingly important,
particularly methods men can use and where the responsibility for
contraception becomes more of a shared responsibility."

The female pill is viewed by medical and social historians as
contributing to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and to the women's
liberation movement, which led to large numbers of women entering the
workforce.

Loeb Lifford and other specialists in reproductive health said a male
pill could also have important and unintended social consequences,
including a potential increase in sexually transmitted diseases if men
in less-stable relationships stop using condoms.

The hunt for a male version of the Pill has been underway for years,
with some of the most significant explorations starting decades ago at
the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research. It was scientists
there who developed the Pill for women in the 1950s, hitting upon the
right mix of hormones taken by mouth to prevent pregnancy.

When researchers at the foundation, its scientific operations merged
with UMass in 1997, wanted to better understand how they might be able
to prevent men from reproducing, they decided to look at pond scum.

Algae are propelled through water by flagella, microscopic engines of
locomotion. And, it turns out, sperm use similar structures for
movement, said George B. Witman III, a UMass cell biologist.

"For many years, people probably wondered why we were interested in
studying pond scum," Witman said. "Pretty much anybody studying male
sperm would acknowledge the debt we owe green algae. When you get down
to the cellular level, the building blocks are essentially the same."

In a lab down the hallway from Witman's office, rows of flasks
demonstrate what happens if the flagella are shut down. On one side of
the lab, flasks glow green from top to bottom. These contain algae that
still have quavering flagella.

In other flasks, the algae hug the bottom -- their flagella are
silenced.

So, Witman and his colleagues wondered, what if you could do the same
thing to sperm? They chose to study the sperm of rams because the
movement of ram sperm closely mimics that of humans.

Witman discovered that ram sperm harbor a protein integral to the
operation of the flagella, and the same protein has been found in human
sperm. And his tests demonstrated that the protein exists nowhere else
in the body, a finding that suggests that a pill might be developed
that would have no side effects.

"This is an important discovery because we have something that is
unique to sperm and also we know it's essential to the sperm," said Dr.
Jerome F. Strauss III, director of the Center for Research on
Reproduction and Women's Health at the University of Pennsylvania.
Strauss is not involved with Witman's research but is familiar with it.

The protein, called Cs, exists from the time sperm originate in the
testes. But it is activated only in the epididymis, a tightly coiled
duct through which sperm travel. It takes about a week for sperm to
pass through the human epididymis -- which would be about 20 feet long
if stretched out end to end. A biochemical messenger activates the Cs
protein, working something like a key turning on the ignition switch of
the sperm.

A separate team of researchers at the University of Washington
engineered a mouse without Cs protein and found that while the male
mouse was incapable of impregnating females, it remained otherwise
healthy and virile.

Other pharmaceutical approaches to developing a male contraceptive
involve hormones or changes in the immune system, both of which raise
concerns because of potential side effects. Safety is paramount in
developing any contraceptive, both because some men would take it for
years, and because unlike drugs used to treat life-threatening
illnesses, birth control pills are preventive, meaning their benefits
must greatly outweigh any risks.

"Our hope now," Witman said, "is to go forward and identify a small
molecule that can gum up the Cs, the ignition switch."

Finding the right compound could prove daunting, Penn's Strauss said.

It means performing sophisticated chemical screening, and that takes
considerable patience and money.

The initial work on finding the right compound will be done by
scientists at SpermaTech in Oslo.

In a telephone interview, one of the founders of the biotech company,
Bjorn Steen Skalhegg, said that shortly after Witman patented his
discovery of the Cs protein in the United States, the Norwegian
researchers disclosed that they had made a similar finding and filed a
patent in Europe.

Now, the scientists from two continents have formed a partnership.

"The need is great," Skalhegg said. "We are 6 billion people
now in the
world, and it is already very, very crowded."



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