Non-Hormonal

Non-Hormonal Contraceptive Discovery Program

To understand the potential contraceptive drug targets and mechanisms, that would be suitable for drug discovery activities and could provide highly effective inhibition of fertility with a very clean safety profile, the program is an early discovery stage research grant to perform genetic analyses on patient samples to identify the underlying genetic causes of patients’ idiopathic infertility.

Strand Life Sciences Pvt. Limited, Banalore, proposes to do a whole exome study on 1,000 subjects to find such targets. Strand will recruit subjects for this study from multiple fertility clinics across the country, and perform whole-exome sequencing and bioinformatics analysis and interpretation to reveal genes and variants associated with idiopathic and asymptomatic infertility. The primary objective of this study is to identify a set of genes associated with idiopathic infertility in otherwise healthy women, by means of a genome-wide variant screen.

The study would enable the broader R&D community to pursue targets and mechanisms identified through this analysis. The initial phase of planning/pilot funding would allow protocol development, regulatory approval, and recruitment and analysis of a small cohort of women to provide proof of feasibility for a larger, more comprehensive, and more robust study to Strand Life Sciences Private Limited.

This eighteen-month pilot observational clinical study, would establish the feasibility of recruiting the right patient population, establish the bioinformatics pipeline, and complete regulatory and data management requirements to inform the foundation’s decision to proceed to a larger study led by Strand Life Sciences.