2000 ANNUAL REPORT
The ICCR: Thirty years of collaboration and innovation
The Population Council’s International Committee for Contraception Research (ICCR), an international group of eminent scientists, celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2000. Current members hail from Australia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Japan, Scotland, Sweden, and the United States. These investigators work closely with scientists at the Council’s Center for Biomedical Research, designing drug delivery systems, prototypes, and clinical protocols for the products under development. They conduct multicenter clinical trials of the Council’s new drugs and delivery systems, help define the needs of the field, and contribute ideas for new methods.
The group was created in late 1970 to provide a noncommercial, international association for identifying, developing, and testing new contraceptives. “There was a need for a public-sector institution for which the bottom line would be to develop improved methods for the world’s diverse population,” explains Council Distinguished Scientist Sheldon J. Segal, then director of the Council’s biomedical research division and creator of the ICCR.
The international background of the committee’s investigators and their staffs at cooperating universities and clinics has strengthened research capacity in developing countries while facilitating the development of widely acceptable products. “We follow the same protocol with different populations around the world,” explains committee member Francisco Alvarez-Sanchez, from PROFAMILIA in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. “This diversity is vital because cultural differences affect acceptability of methods.”
The collaboration benefits the clinicians as well as contraceptive users. Gathering for the committee’s biannual meeting provides “an opportunity to share information with people who have a different perception of research,” says ICCR consultant Rebeca Massai, from the Instituto Chileno de Medicina Reproductiva, in Santiago, Chile.
One expansion of the contraceptive development field that has arisen in part from the collaboration between scientists in the ICCR and at the Center for Biomedical Research is the quest for a contraceptive method for men. Male methods, including an immunocontraceptive and subdermal implants containing the Council’s testosterone substitute MENT™, are being tested at four ICCR locations. ICCR member Anna Glasier, of Lothian Primary Care in Edinburgh, Scotland, who has been testing MENT on hypogonadal men, comments, “It is refreshing after years of working with methods for women to be doing something that holds real promise for men.”
According to Elof Johansson, a Council vice president and director of the Center for Biomedical Research, some of the ICCR’s most remarkable accomplishments have been the development of copper intrauterine devices (the most widely used intrauterine devices in the world), Norplant®, and Mirena®, a medicated intrauterine system. Ongoing ICCR clinical trials include tests of contraceptive vaginal rings, immunocontraception for men, Nestorone® implants for women, Nestorone intrauterine systems, subdermal implants for men, and transdermal delivery systems for women. “Over the years, we have gone from development of long-acting methods for women, to methods women could control themselves, to methods for men, and now to systems for both women and men that deliver hormones for therapeutic purposes,” explains Johansson.
