The National Institutes of Health has awarded Kansas University and the KU Medical Center nearly $8 million to research male contraceptives.

The five-year contract calls for finding chemical compounds that develop into reversible male contraceptives that do not rely on steroids or affect bodily hormones.

The KU team is one of only a few research groups in the world working to develop male contraceptives.

During the last four years, under the previous NIH contract, the KU team identified a chemical compound they named Gamendazole that caused temporary infertility in male rats by affecting sperm production, said Gunda Georg, the project’s lead researcher and director for the Center for Drug Discovery at KU’s Higuchi Biosciences Center on the Lawrence campus.

Gamendazole, on which KU has filed a patent application, emerged from more than 100 compounds tested.

So far, all the testing has taken place with rats. Human testing of Gamedazole could begin in three to four years, if given federal approval.