I don’t have to tell you about how great this could be. Lady birth control via pill is miserable for a whole lot of people, condoms are things that you actually have to use every goddamn time, and then there’s all of that other stuff you can get if you have good health insurance and some patience, the various sperm blocking implements and tiny copper rods etc. A pill that would kill our sperm before it even has a chance to get out into the world, with no boner-kiling and/or breast-growing properties, would be fantastic. Somehow it hasn’t happened yet. But, quite suddenly, we’re very close, all thanks to a repurposed cancer drug, according to a study out today in the journal Cell, courtesy of Harvard’s Dr. James Bradner et al.The drug is actually a synthesized molecule called JQ1, originally developed at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to block the cancer-causing gene BRD4. It works pretty well for that, particularly with lung cancer and blood cancers like leukemia and multiple myeloma. Which is great. But it turns out that sperm and cancer cells have a family of proteins in common, known as bromodomain proteins. In cancer, that protein is called BRD4; in sperm, it’s BRDT. And previous research on BRDT has shown that mice lacking the protein become infertile. So, maybe this compound that inhibits BRD4 would work on BRDT, leading to that same no-baby-having result.And, hey, it worked. Basically, JQ1 blocks part of the chromatin remodeling process. Chromatin, of course, is what we call the combination of DNA and proteins making up the guts of a cell nucleus. If you block this process, you’re also blocking the process by which cells become mature. In the case of sperm, you wind up with a sharply diminished amount of sperm created, with the sperm remainder being fairly crappy and unfit. The idea bore fruit experimentally, leaving mice injected with JQ1 infertile.But infertility is a peculiar thing with the potential for a great many unintended consequences, like impotence and hormonal messes. But the mice showed no change in mating behavior, nor did they show any change in testosterone levels. And, once off the drug, their sperm counts returned to normal. So, it’s reversible. JQ1 does not, however, prevent STDS, assholes that lie about being on the male pill, or drug company gouging.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
Advertisement