Caltech Biologists Develop Long-Term Contraception Shot

Biologists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a shot that gives male and female animals long-term contraception.
According to an article on Pharmaceutical Processing:

​Caltech biologists have developed a nonsurgical method to deliver long-term contraception to both male and female animals with a single shot.
The technique—so far used only in mice—holds promise as an alternative to spaying and neutering feral animals.
The approach was developed in the lab of Bruce Hay, professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech, and is described in the October 5 issue of Current Biology. The lead author on the paper is postdoctoral scholar Juan Li.
Hay’s team was inspired by work conducted in recent years by David Baltimore and others showing that an adeno-associated virus (AAV)—a small, harmless virus that is unable to replicate on its own, that has been useful in gene-therapy trials—can be used to deliver sequences of DNA to muscle cells, causing them to produce specific antibodies that are known to fight infectious diseases, such as HIV, malaria, and hepatitis C.

 
Click here to read the full article on Pharmaceutical Processing.