Sorting through the options
Robotic screening will help in creating effective and safe male contraception
Polina Gershberg, Naked Science
Scientists from the University of Dundee in Scotland have developed a robotic system that allows you to quickly determine the effect of potential drugs on male sperm. An article about this was published in the journal eLife (Gruber et al., A phenotypic screening platform utilising human spermatozoa identifies compounds with contraceptive activity).
Researchers have been trying for more than half a century to develop an effective and safe drug for reversible oral male contraception. Such a tool would not only be much more convenient than condoms, but also helped to remove most of the responsibility for unwanted pregnancy from women. That is why the development of Scottish scientists is potentially very important.
However, there are several reasons why it has not yet been possible to create an effective and non-toxic drug. This is a relatively weak understanding of the biology of human sperm, the lack of studies that would reliably show the relationship between the molecular targets in sperm and their functions, as well as an effective system for testing the effects of a huge number of available chemicals.
A robotic system in the process of screening / © University of Dundee.
Most of the promising molecules for creating male contraceptives are aimed either at reducing sperm motility, or at blocking the acrosomal reaction, thanks to which the male germ cell overcomes the yolk barrier of the female egg. Researchers led by Professor Chris Barratt and Dr. Paul Andrews conducted a systematic search for one of the largest in the world (13 thousand names) ReFRAME databases of low molecular weight compounds to find substances with the potential of a male contraceptive in it.
The traditional method of screening potential drugs is laborious. Thanks to the automated system, the selection process was accelerated thousands of times. "This is a real technological breakthrough in this field of research. For the first time, it allows us to conduct a large–scale verification of the effect of various compounds on sperm function," says Chris Barratt.
According to the American Guttmacher Institute, 89 million unwanted pregnancies and 48 million abortions occur annually in the world, which jeopardizes the health, well-being and social status of many women. The new drug screening system will at least partially eliminate this problem and fill a "critical gap in the contraceptive portfolio."
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