Researchers are preparing for enrollment in their 90-man FDA-approved study of this long-term contraceptive. The Minneapolis/St. Paul site is nearly ready to start enrolling men. But there's bad news too: the Seattle site has fallen through! The researchers are working to set up a new site, as they've had lots of inquiries from men on the west coast. So they're hunting for a great vasectomy doctor in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, or Los Angeles who has the skills and setup to be a clinical trial investigator. They have a couple leads, and we hope to hear good news soon.
Meanwhile, if you live in the Great Lakes area and are interested in the IVD as an alternative to vasectomy, you may want to reserve your spot in the Minneapolis study sooner rather than later, as they've gotten a fair amount of interest. This could be a nice alternative to vasectomy for a man who doesn't want any more children. It's a "kinder, gentler" vasectomy with a possibility of a greater chance of reversibility, since the plugs can be taken out more easily than a vas deferens can be stitched back together.
Read more about how the IVD works and what's known (and not known) about reversal.
If you're interested in trying the IVD in this trial, contact Janelle Antil, Clinical Affairs Manager for the Shepherd Medical Company.
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Take one part styrene and one part maleic anhydride. Purify them a jillion times, then add ethyl acetate in a nitrogen atmosphere. Zap the whole thing to fuse it all together. Now do a bunch more purification, filtering, and drying steps, all the while keeping mountains of paperwork about exactly what you're doing and paying a whole staff of inspectors to watch over everything. Now mix that powder with the purest DMSO and figure out how to get the resulting extremely thick goo into thousands of tiny, tiny syringes while keeping everything sterile.
Turns out making RISUG isn't so easy! RISUG developers got approval this spring to re-open their clinical study and enroll hundreds of additional men, but they're STILL trying to get the actual stuff mass-produced (which takes more effort than making it in the lab). There's hope, though: recognizing the potential importance of a long-term contraceptive such as RISUG, a respected NGO which specializes in technology advancement has offered to partner with the Indian government in moving the manufacturing forward and planning a strategy that will minimize such delays in the future.
Once the clinical study beings again, researchers will enroll only men living near the trial sites in India. If you live outside India and would like RISUG to be available sooner rather than later, read on for how you can make a difference.
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One of the biggest obstacles in creating a hormonal male contraceptive is the limited number of effective testosterone formulations. Testosterone comes in patches, gels, implants and injections -- but not as a pill.
Researchers habe improved injected testosterone formulations over the years -- they now deliver steady doses of testosterone over 3 months. At a recent conference, one of the most respected research groups in this field announced results from over 8 years of working with a long-acting, injectable testosterone, testosterone undecanoate. They reported that the men in their study had healthy prostates and experienced an incease in bone density. Read their summary online.
We’ll keep you posted on further developments.
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After increasing coverage online, male contraceptive research is starting to show up in the print media as well. Glamour magazine mentioned RISUG, and doctors throughout Canada got to read about male contraceptive advances as front page news in the National Review of Medicine, a bi-weekly newspaper for Canadian physicians.
The story covered the pros and cons of hormonal approaches, plus RISUG, the IVD, and even one of the neglected heat methods. You can read it online.
Keep an eye out for a story in Men's Health magazine, and some words about male contraceptive research from the advice columnist in Playboy!
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We need you to test-drive our survey! The Male Contraception Coalition is in the process of launching a new advocacy campaign to turn the heads of policymakers and pharmaceutical company executives. There will be a short survey on MaleContraceptives.org that will start quantifying the size of the potential market for new male contraceptives. You will also be able to tell the policymakers and execs why you think new male contraceptives are important by sending your personal story. We have a draft survey and want to run it by men and women to see if it's well-designed. Got a minute to give us your two cents? Send an e-mail to the Coalition.
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Editors
Elaine Lissner, Director of the Male Contraception Information Project (MCIP)
Email: info@NewMaleContraception.org
MCIP is entirely nonprofit and works in three areas: raising public awareness of promising nonhormonal male contraceptives, advocating increased and expedited government research, and serving as a resource for journalists who wish to write about the subject.
Kirsten Thompson, Director of the Male Contraceptive Coalition (MCC)
Email: info@MaleContraceptives.org
The Coalition’s objectives are to speed the development of new male contraceptives through increased legislative and institutional support, to raise funds for applied male contraception research and development, and to educate the public about the work of the research community.
