Weill Medical College of Cornell University has received a USD 2.07 million NIH center grant to advance a nonhormonal, on-demand male contraceptive targeting soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC, encoded by ADCY10) towards first-in-human clinical trials, funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
The award supports the Weill Cornell Medicine Contraceptive Research Center (WCM-CRC), a multi-project center structured around three linked development programs: investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies and a first-in-human single ascending dose safety trial; formulation and chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) work; and pharmacokinetics, reversibility, metabolite safety, and biodistribution studies.
The scientific rationale rests on genetic and pharmacological evidence that sAC is required for sperm motility. Men and male mice with the sAC gene deleted are infertile due to immotile sperm, with no other immediate phenotypic consequences. In preclinical studies, acute administration of sAC inhibitors to male mice transiently blocked sperm motility and rendered them infertile without observed off-target effects. The WCM-CRC's approach uses acutely acting inhibitors — taken only before intercourse — to reduce systemic exposure and the potential for mechanism-related effects from chronic dosing.
The grant lists Jochen Buck and Lonny R. Levin as principal investigators. The program is funded under NICHD targeted funding opportunity RFA-HD-26-004, with a project period running through August 2030.