Our latest investment — YourChoice: Birth Control 💊 for Men

Goals: more effective than birth control pills for women, better than condoms, non-hormonal, safe, and 100% reversible: YourChoice Therapeutics

Today’s News: “With Series A funding and a pre-IND meeting with the FDA under its belt, the biotech expects to be the first company to enter the clinic with an investigational non-hormonal contraceptive for sperm-producers, with the goal of limiting sperm counts to infertile levels.

The goal is to target the vitamin A signaling pathway because men who have a deficiency in that vitamin have low sperm counts. Dubbed YCT-529, the oral pill aims to inhibit a protein known as retinoic acid receptor-alpha (RAR-alpha), part of the group of nuclear receptors that bind to a form of vitamin A.

With the recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, Bakshi thinks the conversation around male contraception will increase, especially as gender parity rises.

Bakshi pointed to the number of men who receive vasectomies each year — about 500,000 annually in the US, per Cleveland Clinic — which “makes it far more clear that if there was a non-surgical approach, that men would be willing to use that product,” Bakshi explained. People around the world — Brazil, Chile, South Africa, India, Finland — have inquired about wanting to test YourChoice’s pill, including asking if their husbands can get enrolled in a clinical trial”