Finding low-cost solutions neglected by the pharmaceutical industry.

Parsemus Foundation is sponsoring research on two new non-hormonal male contraceptives: one that lasts ten or more years and is reversible before then (RISUG/Vasalgel), and one that lasts about 6 months and can be repeated, or potentially be permanent with two or three treatments two days apart (ultrasound). We’re also pushing for work on a third method, which could potentially drastically reduce the spread of HIV; see below.

Latest news, April 2012: See the new “Clean Sheets Pill” section below!

Vasalgel, Multi-year contraceptive:

Latest news, April 2012: Rabbit study has started!

In February 2010 Parsemus Foundation officially signed a technology transfer agreement for RISUG, bringing RISUG research to the U.S. for the first time after more than 3 decades of research in India. Since then we have selected a contract manufacturer to make RISUG to FDA requirements; technology transfer work started in November 2010 and is now complete (February 2012). A site has been chosen and preliminary rabbit safety and efficacy studies are now starting (March 2012). We are thrilled to have the rabbit studies being conducted by the toxicologist who was part of the World Health Organization site visit team to the the Indian Institute of Technology RISUG labs.

The new version of RISUG made in the U.S. will be named Vasalgel (TM).  Parsemus Foundation has formed a wholly-owned subsidiary, Vasalgel Development Corporation, to develop it and bring it to market at an affordable price.

We are thrilled with the enthusiastic response to our plans to bring Vasalgel to the public outside India! The project will need every bit of that public involvement and support. To stay informed: for background and status information about RISUG/Vasalgel, lots of photos, and a video of the actual RISUG procedure, see the Male Contraception Information Project, which is updated when major milestones are reached. For another perspective, you may also want to read the long and most excellent Wired article. And Vasalgel’s future?  To be notified of Vasalgel’s progress, be on the contact list if it makes it to clinical trials, or express interest in supporting its development, sign up here.

Where can I donate?

This may sound crazy -- who doesn’t want money?? -- but we want to make sure our version works as well as the Indian version before we start taking donations or philanthropic investments. Once we have 6-month rabbit results in hand, we’ll feel a lot more confident.  So sign up on the notification list, and you can bet you’ll be hearing about StartSomeGood or Amazon Donations or CharityBox or PayPal in due time.

We also think Vasalgel has potential as a female contraceptive. RISUG’s developer in India is testing a variant of it with iron mixed in in the Fallopian tubes (in a goat model) for a Gates Foundation grant. So we’ll be interested in trying the Vasalgel in the uterus (which could be a transcervical sterilant, or potentially reversible contraceptive, for other large-animal species, such as medium to large dogs, not just women or goats). In 2011 we did some experimenting with silver-coated hollow glass microbeads, which show up really nicely on ultrasound imaging, so that would probably be what we would mix in, instead of iron (which is visible on X-ray, less used in the U.S. than ultrasound imaging). But the first order of business remains getting it ready for male use.

Testicular therapeutic ultrasound, multi-month contraceptive:

In 2007, Parsemus Foundation sponsored a study, conducted by Family Health International with the University of North Carolina, to test therapeutic ultrasound applied to the testes as a multi-month contraceptive (15 minutes of treatment for about 6 months of effect). This method was shown to work by one professor in the 1970’s but had never been taken seriously by other researchers until now.  The FHI/UNC team’s successful pilot study was the basis for the UNC team’s winning application for a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations grant to continue the work. Congratulations to the team for doing the work that got this method taken seriously! 

Parsemus Foundation is also helping an Italian team working on ultrasound to pursue grant funding to continue their successful work on ultrasound as permanent sterilization in dogs.  Lastly, we have funded an ultrasound study at the University of California, which has managed to get it to work in primates (although not as quick or long-lasting as in dogs; these older monkeys have big tough testes!). Preliminary results from all three teams were presented in October 2011 as posters at the Future of Contraception Initiative conference.

In January 2012, the results from the UNC team were published and got widespread press coverage. Here are a few examples:

    Time Magazine Jan. 31, 2012

    Globe and Mail Feb. 2, 2012

    Male Contraception Information Project press release

It is now clear that under the right conditions, ultrasound works. Based on the results of these studies, though, we think ultrasound has the most potential as a nonsurgical sterilization alternative, rather than the 6-month contraceptive originally imagined (since with short-term use, you get into tricky issues of how long it takes to wear off, whether there might be poor-quality sperm during the bounce-back period that are still capable of fertilizing and causing an abnormal offspring, and whether and how reliably fertility would bounce back after repeated use). 

We encourage other funders to pursue ultrasound as a permanent nonsurgical sterilization (a nonsurgical alternative to vasectomy) now that the proof of concept is done, as we must focus our funding on Vasalgel.  We also keep our eye on, and encourage, contraceptive research in general-- with an emphasis on finishing the job on methods already known to work. We’ll mention one more:

“Clean sheets pill”

This quick-acting male contraceptive pill is in earlier stages of research, but it’s exciting because of one feature: it could potentially drastically reduce the male-to-partner transmission of HIV.  But would men accept the mechanism of action -- a semen-free orgasm -- even if it feels exactly the same? Unfortunately, we don’t have the money to find out-- but we hope other funders will give it a chance. To read more about it and how it works, see MaleContraceptives.org. And for the team’s newer results, here’s the Poster.pdf presented at the Future of Contraception Initiative conference in Seattle in October 2011. If you’d like to encourage its development, fill out the short no-spam petition at the Male Contraception Information Project.

News, March 30: We’re trying something new. A TechCITEMENT article has come out about the “clean sheets pill,” and we’re hoping it will go viral like the previous TechCITEMENT article on RISUG/Vasalgel did. So we’re trying GATHERING the money for Dr. Amobi’s work!

DONATION FOR CLEAN SHEETS PILL RESEARCH NEXT STEP

Please spread the word. If we only raise a few thousand dollars, we’ll use it to get him from London to the International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. in July to make connections with funders. If we raise $300,000 or more, we’ll use it to fund the actual study-- which, if it goes well, will get the team results that can’t be ignored.  If we raise less than $300,000, we’ll save it up until the word gets around more.

We can match enough to pay for Amazon’s transaction fees, so 100% of your donation will go towards getting the researcher to the conference-- or, if there’s enough, the key study.

Last update April 15, 2012