Long Term Contraception In A Single Shot
Biologists have developed a nonsurgical method to deliver long-term contraception to both male and female animals with a single shot - but only in mice.- The road map is to as an alternative to spaying and neutering feral animals. The approach was developed in the lab of Bruce Hay, professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech, who leveraged work conducted in recent years by David Baltimore and others showing that an adeno-associated virus (AAV)--a small, harmless virus that is unable to replicate on its own, that has been useful in gene-therapy trials--can be used to deliver sequences of DNA to muscle cells, causing them to produce specific antibodies that are known to fight infectious diseases, such as HIV, malaria, and hepatitis C. read more