Bill Gates Funds New Self-Assembling Contraceptive
Updated
With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the Broad Institute have concocted a frightening new self-injecting contraceptive that uses tiny crystals to self-assemble inside the body to construct an implant that blocks pregnancy. These crystal suspensions form a long-lasting “depot” under the skin, releasing medication over months or years.
The Gates Foundation proudly calls the new injection “a non-surgical option for women” who want to avoid pregnancy. Vivian Feig, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, is one of the lead authors of the study, which began as an effort by Bill Gates to do what he does best: experiment on the less fortunate in developing nations with pharmaceuticals to ensure they don’t reproduce. Speaking about the project, which demonstrated very controlled, sustained delivery, likely for multiple months and even years through a small needle for contraceptives (and one day other drugs), Feig remarked:
“The overarching goal is to give women access to a lot of different formats for contraception that are easy to administer, compatible with being used in the developing world, and have a range of different timeframes of durations of action. In our particular project, we were interested in trying to combine the benefits of long-acting implants with the ease of self-administrable injectables.”
Injectable suspension drugs already exist in the United States and other nations, but they are dispersed throughout the tissue after injections. Thus, they are only effective for roughly three months. Likewise, other injectable products have been developed that form depots under the skin that last longer, but they generally need the addition of precipitating polymers to work. Often heavy, these polymers can make up 23 to 98 percent of the solution, making it difficult to inject.
To fix the problem, Gates and his paid partners set out to design a formula that could be self-injected through a small-gauge needle and last for at least six months and up to two years. The team developed a contraceptive implant using levonorgestrel, a hydrophobic molecule that forms crystals, which, when suspended in the biocompatible solvent benzyl benzoate, self-assemble into a highly compact depot under the skin after injection. The injections deliver the long-acting contraceptive through self-aggregating long-acting injectable microcrystals, or “SLIM.” Benzyl benzoate, used in the past as an additive in injectable drugs, doesn’t mix well with biological fluids, enabling the solid drug crystals to form the depot without requiring large amounts of polymer.
Bypassing traditional medical oversight thanks to the use of an ultra-thin 30 gauge needle, study author Giovanni Traverso, MD, BChir, PhD, an associate professor at MIT and physician at Harvard Medical School, describes the innovative drug delivery mechanism, stating, “Upon injection, levonorgestrel microcrystals self-aggregate in the subcutaneous space, forming a monolithic implant.” The researchers compare this solvent-exchange crystallization process to “tiny puzzle pieces” that, after injection, undergo solvent exchange to assemble into a single, solid implant. This implant slowly erodes at the surface, enabling prolonged drug release without the need for surgical intervention.
What could possibly go wrong? Besides noting the submission of a provisional patent application for the technology behind their work, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in their ethics declaration, the authors fail to discuss the side effects of the solvent used in their injection, benzyl benzoate (BB). BB is biocompatible and has a poor ability to mix with biological fluids, which allows the solid drug crystals to self-assemble into a depot under the skin after being injected. By switching the density of the depot, the researchers discovered that by adding small amounts of a polymer such as polycaprolactone—a “biodegradable polyester”—they could change the density of the drug. MIT graduate student and study author Sanghyun Park noted:
“By incorporating a very small amount of polymers—less than 1.6 percent by weight—we can modulate the drug release rate, extending its duration while maintaining injectability. This demonstrates the tunability of our system, which can be engineered to accommodate a broader range of contraceptive needs as well as tailored dosing regimens for other therapeutic applications.”
The polymer is a biodegradable polyester. What? That certainly does not sound like a substance that should be injected into the body. And is benzyl benzoate safe? The study authors note it will “go away,” leaving behind the crystallized drug structure. Still, BB is a known skin irritant when used as a topical scabicide. It is also used as an insect repellent. Likewise, it has been used as an excipient in some testosterone-replacement injectable medications, causing at least one case of anaphylaxis. When used to treat scabies, benzyl benzoate exerts toxic effects on the nervous system of the parasite, resulting in its death. It has also proven toxic to the mite ova, though its exact mechanism is unknown. Interestingly, Benzyl Benzoate is on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) List of Essential Medicines as a scabicide. Science Direct notes this about Benzyl Benzoate related to “Reproductive Toxicity”:
“To date, no published studies have specifically investigated the adverse effects of benzyl benzoate on reproductive ability. However, benzyl benzoate did lead to increased fetal resorption in pregnant rats and, suggestive of endocrine system endpoints, produced estrogenic responses in MCF7 human breast cancer cells in vitro.”
While SLIM hasn’t gone through clinical trials yet, the development of the technology in preclinical models paves the way for Bill Gates and his paid minions to reach their goal of injecting the self-assembling technology into humans by 2028. With a drug aimed at stopping reproduction for years, comprised of solvents that cause reproductive toxicity, if Gates gets his way, another human experiment is on the horizon.
