BLOOMBERG | The Future of Male Birth Control Could Be Pills, Gels, and Implants
EXCERPT FROM: BLOOMBERG
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The other leading hydrogel-based device is Plan A, developed by NEXT Life Sciences. The insertion procedure for Plan A, which relies on a compound called Vasalgel, is the same as the one for Adam and can be just as quick—“less than 10 minutes,” says Michel Labrecque, professor emeritus with the Faculty of Medicine at Laval University in Quebec City, who conducted the first Canadian trial. “Men often asked us, ‘Wait, that’s it?’”
Plan A’s hydrogel, unlike Contraline’s, isn’t water-soluble. It’s designed to be biocompatible—not harmful to living tissue—though, and to stay in the body for as long as a decade and be reversible at any time with a sodium bicarbonate injection. “It turns the hydrogel back into water,” says Darlene Walley, CEO of NEXT. Early trials in Australia and Canada showed a perfect success rate for insertion of the gel’s delivery device, according to the company. Testing for feasibility and reversibility should begin this year in Australia, Canada and the US. NEXT is raising a Series A round of $20 million to get Plan A through the remaining trials before FDA submission. Walley says she expects the last trial to start in 2026 and hopes to bring the product to market by 2027.
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The pharmaceutical industry has largely stayed on the sidelines. One study published in 2023 showed that, of the $165 million raised across the field two years earlier, only $23 million had come from pharma. This isn’t because drugmakers see no market; it’s because they don’t want to shoulder early risk. Male contraception has no financial precedent: no major exits, no approved drugs, no billion-dollar benchmark. The sweet spot for biotech investors is typically a large potential market with enough of an efficacy and safety track record to mitigate the risks. “There is interest, but everyone’s hesitant to be the lead investor,” says Vahdat, the MCI executive director. “No one wants to be the anchor.”
The ones who are buying in are bullish enough to invoke the GLP-1 weight-loss drug boom. “There could be multiple multibillion-dollar companies within this space,” says Harrison Valner, managing partner at Seaside Ventures Management LLC and an investor in NEXT Life Sciences.
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