Mucommune Awarded Contraceptive Research & Development Center from NIH to Advance its Novel, Antibody-Based Non-Hormonal Contraceptives into Clinical Trials
September 23, 2026
Mucommune has been awarded $7.5M over 4 years as part of a program project from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to advance Mucommune’s non-hormonal contraceptive antibody into clinical development. Specifically, the Contraceptive Research & Development Center (CRDC) created by the support will evaluate two complementary non-hormonal contraceptive products: MM011, a fast-dissolving vaginal antibody tablet for on-demand contraception, and MM012, a VR providing sustained antibody release for month-long contraception.
The prevalence and enormous societal costs of unintended pregnancies underscore the continued unmet need in effective contraceptive options that can meet the diverse reproductive health needs and preferences of women in the 21st century. To date, virtually all women-controlled, reversible contraceptive options are hormonal in nature, which is incompatible with the preferences and/or underlying medical contraindications for millions of reproductive age women.
Mucommune has in-licensed a best-in-class highly multivalent anti-sperm monoclonal antibody from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The antibody is designed to agglutinate nearly all progressively motile sperm in seconds, thereby preventing sperm from swimming through mucus to reach and fertilize the egg. To address diverse reproductive preferences, Mucommune has further developed an instantly dissolving tablet formulation (MM011) for on-demand non-hormonal contraception, and a vaginal ring formulation (MM012) for month-long non-hormonal contraception. The molecule as well as the two formulations have been validated in large animal studies to completely eliminate all progressively motile sperm in under 2 minutes.
Mucommune will leverage the new award to advance MM011 into a Phase 1/2a clinical study to evaluate both safety and surrogate efficacy, and MM012 into a Phase 1 clinical study to evaluate safety. If successful, the program will establish clinical validation of a new class of antibody-based, non-hormonal contraceptives that combine exceptionally potent yet specific biological activity with localized vaginal delivery, providing women with both on-demand and long-acting contraceptive options.
In addition to Mucommune, the team include leading academic and clinical investigators in contraception and women’s health, including Dr. Courney Schreiber, Chief of Family Planning in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine in University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Leo Han, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the School of Medicine at Oregon Health Science University.
“We are grateful for the continued NIH support and the opportunity to advance this innovative approach to non-hormonal contraception,” said Dr. Thomas Moench, co-PI of the award and the Founding VP of Clinical Development at Mucommune with over 3 decades of experience advancing multiple products into early and late stage clinical development. “We believe this program represents an important opportunity to translate the latest biotechnological and formulation advances into practical products that can substantially broaden the contraceptive choices available to millions of women. We believe antibody-based contraception has the potential to transform how our society approach family planning.”
The PI of the CRDC is Dr. Keiichiro Kushiro, Executive Director of Research at Mucommune, who has led the development of Mucommune’s female reproductive health pipeline. “Our vision is to develop safe, effective, and convenient non-hormonal contraceptive products that provide women with greater control over how and when they prevent pregnancy. By developing both an on-demand fast-dissolving tablet and a sustained-release vaginal ring based on the same best-in-class contraceptive antibody, we strive to provide complementary options that can address the diverse preferences and needs of women.”
“This award represents an important milestone in Mucommune’s efforts to translate its pioneering research in mucosal antibody engineering and drug delivery into products that can address unmet medical needs for millions, this time targeting the decades-long unmet need for non-hormonal female contraception.,” said Sam Lai, Professor of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics at UNC – Chapel Hill, and Founder of Mucommune. “This program brings together some of the best scientific, clinical, and product-development talents in the country to advance this vision. It further validates Mucommune’s evolution into an integrated R&D company that advances novel platforms into clinical development. I cannot be more proud of the team as well as the scientists and collaborators that make the work possible.”
Beyond contraception, Mucommune continues to advance its proprietary mucosal antibody and drug-delivery technologies to develop additional products addressing unmet needs in female reproductive health.
About Mucommune, LLC
Mucommune, LLC is an integrated biotechnology R&D company in Morrisville, NC that builds on nearly a decade of pioneering pharmaceutical research on mucosal immunotherapeutics and mucosal drug delivery platforms. Mucommune has advanced multiple assets into clinical development, and incubated technology platforms that have received over $120M to date in support of active clinical and preclinical development. Leveraging this strong scientific foundation, Mucommune previously spun off Inhalon Biopharma (inhaled treatments for various acute respiratory infections), and is actively advancing innovative products for women’s reproductive health, including biologics-based non-hormonal contraception, as well as a platform that enables direct engineering of immune cells in vivo, with the promise of not only greater efficacy and safety but also dramatically lower costs and ready access. Our mission is to translate innovative immunoengineering and drug-delivery approaches into transformative products that address significant unmet medical needs.
This research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Number P50HD123737. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.