On October 22, 2026, Weill Cornell Medicine announced a four-year, $8.2 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to develop and test an experimental on-demand male contraceptive pill. The project is led by pharmacology professors Dr. Jochen Buck and Dr. Lonny Levin. The pill is designed to be taken about 30 minutes before sex. Buck says it gives a six-to-eight-hour window of protection, after which "fertility returns to normal." The grant pays for the toxicology and safety studies needed before the drug can go into people.

Why It Matters

Most male-contraception development so far uses the **daily or long-acting** model built for women's methods. Contraline's ADAM hydrogel implant ([our coverage of its $92M Series B](/stories/contraline-92m-series-b-male-contraceptive)) and hormonal gels like NES/T both work that way. An on-demand, non-hormonal pill is a different product. It fits how a large share of men already think about condoms, used per occasion. That gives it a natural OTC-style retail and telehealth story if it ever clears regulators. It also needs a different kind of trust: the method only works if both partners believe it was taken in time, so pharmacy shelves, telehealth intake and couples-communication tools would all need to support it. Keep expectations measured. The compound has not yet been dosed in a human. Phase 1 trials test safety, not efficacy, and this grant only funds the work to get there. Weill Cornell has not given a timeline. Still, NICHD has now funded this program three times in a row, and a company has been set up to take it forward. That makes the sAC pathway one of the more credible non-hormonal bets in a category that has been "five years away" for decades. It is also a separate effort from the [Cornell (Ithaca) JQ1 mouse work](/stories/cornell-reversible-male-contraception) we covered in April, which targets sperm production instead. Investors should watch whether Sacyl raises private money alongside the federal grant.

The drug works differently from most male-contraceptive candidates. It does not suppress hormones or sperm production. It blocks an enzyme called soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) that sperm need in order to swim. The lab's proof-of-concept results, published in Nature Communications in 2023, showed that blocking sAC left sperm immobile and prevented pregnancy in preclinical models. This is the third NICHD grant to the Buck–Levin lab. The first, in 2020 from NICHD's Contraceptive Development Research Center Program, funded the proof of concept. The second funded work to refine candidate compounds. Assistant professor Dr. Peter Meinke contributed drug-discovery and medicinal-chemistry work to optimize the sAC inhibitors. He described the hard part: a molecule that is "fast-acting, potent, safe," active in the man for hours, and still able to stop sperm from swimming once they are inside a partner who has not taken the drug.

The next step is a phase 1 placebo-controlled trial in healthy men. Before that can start, the team has to develop an oral formulation, set up manufacturing protocols and finish safety work. Levin says the current grant "brings us to the first human trial of our compound." He calls sperm motility "a very good biomarker predictive of future efficacy." Buck, Levin and Meinke co-founded Sacyl Pharmaceuticals to take the drug through FDA approval. Sacyl's chief scientific officer, Dr. Gregory Kopf, is leading that effort.

The researchers frame the need simply. About half of all pregnancies worldwide are unplanned, and men's options are still limited to condoms and vasectomy. "We hope someday family planning becomes a shared responsibility where men or couples can go to the local pharmacy to get male contraceptives," Levin said.

Sources

Update — 2026-10-23

Initial entry — story first created.