Study of sperm calcineurin to develop male contraceptive

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K15687
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Urology
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: IKAWA MASAHITO 大阪大学, 微生物病研究所, 教授 (20304066)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): MIYATA Haruhiko 大阪大学, 微生物病研究所, 助教 (50604732) ; NODA Taichi 大阪大学, 微生物病研究所, 研究員 (50712551)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: カルシニューリン / 避妊薬 / 不妊モデル / ゲノム編集 / 実験動物

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Calcineurin consists of a catalytic subunit and a regulatory subunit. There are 3 ORFs for catalytic subunit (ca, cb, cc) and 2 ORFs for regulatory subunit (r1, r2). We have shown that sperm specific calcineurin (cc/r2) is essential for sperm fertilizing ability so that the specific inhibitor may be used as male contraceptive. In this study, we cloned all 5 human ORFs into mammalian expression vector and succeeded to reconstitute the functional calcineurins in HEK293T cells. Beside, we searched in silico database and listed the 12 candidate proteins as sperm calcineurin specific substrates expressed in testis. Our study paved the way to screen the molecules for male contraceptive.

Free Research Field

実験動物学