Product/Service Development

Aravind Vijayaraghavan and a team from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom propose to develop new elastic composite materials for condoms containing nanomaterials like graphene. This composite material will be tailored to enhance the natural sensation during intercourse while using a condom, which should encourage condom use.

Benjamin Strutt and a team from Cambridge Design Partnership in the United Kingdom will design a male condom made from a composite anisotropic material that will provide universal fit and is designed to gently tighten during intercourse, enhancing sensation and reliability. New designs will be created and tested for specific functional and performance parameters that they will identify by consulting with users. They will also develop a manufacturing process and build prototypes that will be tested for feel, fit, performance, and manufacturability.

Mark McGlothlin of Apex Medical Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. will produce a male condom with enhanced strength and sensitivity using collagen fibrils from bovine tendons, which are widely available from meat processing. Collagen fibrils would provide a hydrated micro-rough skin-like surface texture that facilitates heat transfer to produce a more natural sensation. They will develop methods to best arrange the fibrils and more safely crosslink them. Barrier properties of the engineered condom will be quantified, enhanced if necessary, and sensitivity will be tested.

Michael Rutner and Russell Burley of House of Petite Pty. Ltd. in Australia will build and test a universal condom applicator pack (CAP), which is designed to ensure that male condoms can be quickly, accurately, safely and easily fitted. Condoms are currently mostly applied manually, which can increase the risk of disease transmission or unplanned pregnancy due to damage to the condom during fitting or incorrect positioning, for example. The CAP and condom will be provided in the same packaging, and the mechanism is designed to ensure correct positioning and avoid damage.

Paul Dyson of Swansea University in the United Kingdom will work to control the incidence of sleeping sickness in humans, which is caused by the Trypanosome parasite transmitted by tsetse flies, by genetically modifying a fly gut bacterium to deliver double-stranded (ds) RNAs to block two important parasite proteins. Trypanosomes mature in the flies, thereby gaining the capacity to infect mammals. He will engineer the bacteria and introduce them into tsetse flies, then test the capacity of the dsRNAs to inhibit their target proteins in trypanosomes.

Willem van Rensburg of Kimbranox Ltd. in South Africa will test a condom applicator, the Rapidom, that is designed for easy, technique-free application of male condoms. Manual application of condoms takes time, which can lead to incorrect positioning as it interrupts the sexual act, and current applicators require good technique. Kimbranox has designed an applicator with an easy, fail-safe design that is applied with one motion, thereby minimizing interruption.

Karen Buch and Ducksoo Kim of Boston University Medical Center in the U.S. will design and fabricate a durable male condom with a super-hydrophilic nanoparticle coating to better protect against breakage and thereby transmission of infection. The coating is composed of covalently linked nanofabricated polymers that work by trapping a thin film of water to reduce friction and shearing forces. The coated condoms will be mechanically tested for surface integrity and friction profiles, and could eventually be combined with anti-infectives.

L. David Sibley at Washington University in St. Louis in the U.S. is developing a long-term in vitro intestinal epithelial culture system for the intracellular parasite Cryptosporidium, which causes severe diarrheal disease in both humans and animals, and is refractory to many anti-parasitic drugs. Currently, Cryptosporidium can only be grown in infected calves or in short-term in vitro cultures, which cannot be used for the high-throughput chemical screens needed to identify new drugs.

Richard Chartoff of the University of Oregon in the U.S. will develop a high-strength, ultra-thin, shape-memory material for making male condoms. He will tailor polyurethane elastic polymers (elastomers) to reduce thickness and increase strength, and then program them using temperature to fix a temporary shape that can then be recovered upon exposure to body temperature during application, thereby improving tactility and enhancing sensitivity.

Lakshminarayanan Ragupathy of HLL Lifecare Ltd. in India will improve the safety and appeal of male condoms by incorporating graphene into existing natural rubber latex condoms. Graphene is a single-layer, crystalline form of carbon that is highly elastic and very strong. And, unlike latex, it also conducts heat. Mixing graphene with existing condom material should lead to stronger, thinner, heat-conducting condoms that are less noticeable for users, and allow for the incorporation of drugs and compounds that can protect against sexually transmitted diseases or enhance sexual experience.