UCLA researcher Amander Clark is part of a multi-institutional team of investigators that received an $8 million, four-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop new forms of female contraceptives.
The interdisciplinary project, called the Ovarian Contraceptive Discovery Initiative, is a collaboration between Clark’s lab and researchers from Northwestern Medicine, Rutgers University and the Ragon Institute.
“The last major innovation in family planning was the development of the oral contraceptive pill in the 1950s,” said Clark, a UCLA professor and chair of the department of molecular, cell and developmental biology and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA. “The goal of this project is to enable the creation of new, accessible and low-cost contraceptives that can be used by women around the world who need additional options for their family planning.”
