What happened: On March 23, researchers working on a male contraceptive pill, tested in mice, discovered that the medicine was 99 percent efficient in preventing pregnancy. Animal testing of the non-hormonal tablet yielded the breakthrough discoveries, which were presented at the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting on March 23. There were no known side effects, which could be of concern in past attempts to develop male contraception. Previously: Male condoms and vasectomy were the only birth control alternatives available for males until now. The male contraceptive pill passed its first phase of human safety testing in 2019, but the majority of them focused on the male sex hormone known as testosterone, which causes adverse effects similar to those seen with the female pill, such as weight gain and depression. About the pill: “Scientists have been working for decades to produce an effective male oral contraceptive, but there are currently no authorised pills in the market,” Dr Abdullah Al Noman stated at the meeting, presenting the findings of the novel non-hormonal substance. The researchers used a protein called the retinoic acid receptor alpha to design the male contraceptive. What’s next: YCT529 will be tested in human clinical trials in the third or fourth quarter of 2022, according to Gunda Georg, Ph.D., one of the primary researchers at the University of Minnesota.