We’re making the clinical trial batch of Vasalgel this month! And we need your help!
Parsemus Foundation is a small organization that’s determined to provide a big service: develop a new, long-acting, potentially reversible male contraceptive. Your support makes a difference — demonstrating that there’s a market for it, and spreading the word to your own networks (thank you!).
Donations big and small have also been critical in keeping Vasalgel moving — for example funding much of the 1-year baboon trial. Now we’re at another critical step: Making and filling the gel for the upcoming clinical trial. At least we’re not making some expensive biologic or gene therapy! But it’s still a big bill: $127,000 to mix the polymer and fill the vials to regulatory standards.
Have you donated yet this year? If not, your donation now will ensure that Vasalgel will make it to the clinical trial, the next important milestone in its journey to market.
As a thank-you, we’ll send the fabulous “I’m nuts about Vasalgel” sticker to anyone who donates $20 or more. (You need more suggestive double entendres in your life, right?) The first 111 donors of $100 or more will also get the very last of our “NO MORE MONKEYING AROUND WITH CONTRACEPTION” baboon stickers. (No guarantee that these will be collectors’ items one day, but you never know.) And the 100th donor of any amount will get a call from the Vasalgel project’s director to answer all your questions about Vasalgel progress! So please keep Vasalgel moving — donate today.
Future plans for sustainability
How is the Vasalgel project going to sustain itself as the numbers get even bigger? Revolution Contraceptives, LLC, the social venture started by Parsemus Foundation to develop Vasalgel, is preparing materials for social investors (supporters who also have the big bucks necessary to make the multi-million-dollar clinical trials happen). They’ll take big risks because they want to see Vasalgel become an option. But until then, Vasalgel needs its fan base to show its strength and come out in force. Send your $1, your $20, your $100, whatever shows that you want Vasalgel to make it to trials!
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
—Margaret Mead, Anthropologist
Progress update: full speed ahead
It’s hard to believe how much there is to be done in the next three months in order to start enrolling men in the first clinical trial by the end of the year. As noted above, the clinical-grade batch of Vasalgel to be used in the trial is being produced and filled into vials over the next couple of weeks. Then part of the material gets rushed across the country for stability studies, while part goes for final toxicology studies. Meanwhile we aim to be talking to regulators in July about the trial — and July is just a couple months away!
