Item of Interest: NICHD website seeks to foster contraceptive and infertility research

A new website offers reproductive health researchers a way to search for genes, proteins, and other molecules that could provide the basis for studies to develop new contraceptive methods and infertility treatments. The Contraceptive Infertility Target Database (CITDBase) is a free public resource developed by the Contraceptive Development Program in the NICHD’s Division of Population Health Research. The website is described in detail in an article appearing in Biology of Reproduction.

The authors cite a worldwide yearly incidence of 86 million unintended pregnancies, limited contraceptive options, and side effects of existing contraceptive methods as a rationale for creation of the database.

The site offers a way to search for drug targets—a molecule in the body to which a drug could be directed to produce a desired effect—for contraceptive development or infertility research. The CITDBase provides access to several public databases of the human genome, proteins, and RNA, narrowing the search to the human reproductive tract, reproductive system, and reproductive tissue. The new database addresses the NICHD Strategic Plan’s Theme 2: Promoting Gynecologic Andrologic, and Reproductive Health and its goal, to “enable women and men to manage fertility and minimize the impact of gynecologic and andrologic conditions in support of lifelong reproductive health.”

Reference:
Sinha, S. et.al.  Contraceptive and infertility target DataBase (CITDBase): A contraceptive drug development tool for targeting and analysis of human reproductive specific tissues. Biology of Reproduction. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolre/ioab172 .