$400,000
Awarded 2025
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford, CA
About
James Chen is Professor and Chair of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine, where his laboratory develops chemical tools to investigate fundamental questions in cell biology. Dr. Chen’s team has pioneered the study of HIPK4 as a male contraceptive target, publishing foundational research that established this protein’s essential role in sperm development. This project is a collaboration with the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.
Our Grant
HIPK4 is a protein kinase, a molecular switch, that is specifically expressed in developing sperm cells. Male mice lacking HIPK4 are infertile but otherwise completely healthy, suggesting that drugs targeting this protein could provide highly selective contraception without broad side effects. MCI’s grant supports Dr. Chen and collaborators in developing a class of compounds called “degraders,” which eliminate HIPK4 protein from sperm rather than simply blocking its activity, a strategy that may offer more complete and durable contraceptive effects, and that could require lower doses than conventional inhibitors.