Nanocontraception is based on the idea that nanoparticles — here, about 100 nanometres in diameter, or roughly one-thousandth the width of a piece of paper or of a strand of human hair — can somehow be delivered to the testicles, where they can be warmed.
If you could warm up the testicles just a bit, you would have a way to turn sperm production on and off at will because the warmer they get, the less fertile they become. But it’s a delicate process because the testicles can be irreversibly destroyed if they become too warm; the tissue dies and can no longer produce sperm, even when the testicles return to their normal temperature.
Using nanotechnology to warm testicles was first studied in 2013 on mice by biologist Fei Sun and his multidisciplinary research team. His early experiments involved injecting nanoparticles directly into mouse testicles.
Sun’s ultimate goal is human contraception, although he admits that’s still a long way off. As with zoo animals, detailed studies will be required to establish that nanocontraception is not toxic for men. It is also more difficult to put a man under anesthesia for four hours and wrap an electric coil around his testicles than it is to do the same thing on a mouse.
This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.
