Team:Montpellier
Why is it crucial to find a new approach to contraception?
Hormonal contraception has a lot of side effects for women (such as weight gain or acne), a pill is easy to forget, and there is an environmental impact since water can be contaminated by hormones.
Despite the huge progress made for contraception since the beginning of the 20th century contraception still needs improvment.
We want to use microbicide with a spermicidal effect as a new way of contraception: safe and affordable, with a long term effect.
How do we do that ?
We decided to focus on making a new kind of contraceptive using Lactobacillus jensenii, which is one of the most represented bacteria in the vaginal flora. This hormone-free contraception uses a designed Lactobacillus jensenii that has the ability to immobilize spermatozoa in the vagina.
How does it really work? Our goal is to create bacteria capable of having a “switch effect”. When a woman decides to turn it on, bacteria will have a spermicidal effect and will allow in situ contraception. Otherwise, bacteria will be in “off mode”, and spermatozoa will be able to pass.
Several studies have demonstrated that many molecules have spermicidal activity, we are focusing on :
The idea is to introduce the genes that are coding for the spermicidal peptids and anti bodies into Lactobacillus jensenii and then to apply a colony of these designed bacteria into the vagina for long-term contraception.
Lactobacillus jensenii a little-known bacteria from scientific consortia
