Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has developed a horrifying new contraceptive injection for women that “self-assembles” inside the body.
The new injectable platform was funded by the Gates Foundation and developed by researchers from MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the Broad Institute.
Sounding more like a chilling scene from a sci-fi movie, the injections contain microcrystals that self-assemble inside the body to create an implant that blocks pregnancy.
The Gates Foundation is promoting the new injections as a “nonsurgical option for women.”
The researchers argue that the new technology has the potential to be used for future adaptation to neuropsychiatric and infectious diseases.
However, the self-assembling drug delivery mechanism raises serious safety, ethical, and biosecurity concerns.
The new technology was detailed in Nature Chemical Engineering and reported by Healio.
The injections deliver the long-acting contraceptive levonorgestrel through self-aggregating long-acting injectable microcrystals, or “SLIM.”
The microcrystals form an implant inside the recipient’s body after injection.
Giovanni Traverso, MD, BChir, PhD, associate professor at MIT and a physician at Harvard Medical School, explains:
“Once injected, the drug microcrystals self-aggregate in the subcutaneous space to form a monolithic implant.”
In a press release, the researchers described the mechanism as “like tiny puzzle pieces that, once injected inside the body, undergo solvent exchange to assemble into a single solid implant that slowly releases the drug as the surface erodes.”
This solvent-exchange crystallization process allows for “prolonged drug release” without requiring surgery.
It also enables administration with an ultra-thin 30-gauge needle
The technology bypasses traditional medical oversight and dramatically increases the possibility of self-administration.
The researchers claim that self-administration would improve accessibility and “medication use.”
But this radical convenience comes at a cost.
Traverso explained the driving motivation behind the project:
“The challenge is that people do not like injections.
“Is there a way to engineer something to help overcome those types of challenges? That is our focus.”
Their solution was to use a solvent that solubilizes the drug during injection.
The solvent will then “go away” in the body, leaving behind the crystallized drug structure.
“What we were able to figure out is by using a solvent or fluid that can help solubilize the drug, we could load that solution in a way that, when injected, that solvent would go away and leave behind that solid depot of drug,” Traverso told Healio.
“Because it is fluid and we are loading it, it is much easier to inject. That was critical.
“We also wanted that object to be solid enough that we could retrieve it if we needed to.”
The goal, he said, was a drug platform that could be injected easily yet form a physically solid implant that may be removable if required.
However, the method of removing the implant post-aggregation is unclear.
According to Healio, “the solvent-exchange-mediated aggregation mechanism allows injections through needles as small as 30 G with no polymer and 25 G with a small amount of polymer while extending the drug release time frame.”
Histological studies allegedly confirmed the drug platform was “well tolerated.”
The Gates-funded researchers are now hoping the technology’s applications could extend beyond contraception.
“Specifically, in applications such as contraception, SLIM’s capability for prolonged drug release could significantly reduce the frequency of administration compared with current self-administrable options such as Depo-Provera and Sayana Press,” the researchers wrote.
But they don’t intend to stop at contraceptives.
“Traverso said the researchers are still actively working on the platform and applying it to several other infectious and neuropsychiatric conditions.”
“From a manufacturing standpoint, this [design] is simple and low cost,” Traverso said.
“This work was funded by the Gates Foundation, an organization that considers those aspects from an early stage.”
“We hope to be in humans [with this technology] within the next 3 to 5 years, assuming further funding,” he concluded.
The Gates Foundation is now backing a self-assembling drug delivery platform designed for low-cost mass production, self-injection, and potential fertility suppression.
The developers plan to expand the use of the technology to psychiatric drugs and vaccines.
The Gates Foundation, MIT engineering, and the Broad Institute want their self-assembling technology to be injected into humans by 2028.
Notably, Bill Gates supports depopulation and has previously promoted the use of vaccines and contraceptives to achieve this objective.
During a 2010 TED Talk, Gates stated that “if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [the world population] by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”
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