Who are you?
My name is Jon Oatley. I’m the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University. I also hold a tenured faculty position in the School of Molecular Biosciences.
What are you working on?
The research program that I oversee is directed on two fronts. One is generating new knowledge about the fundamental processes that underpin sperm formation across mammalian species. And in doing that, we look for novel targets for potential male contraceptive development.
And the second main area in my lab is engineering the genetics of food animals to build traits of resiliency to try to fortify the future of food security for a growing global population.
Why is this research important?
On the male contraceptive side, at present, we have a net gain of one person on the planet every 21 seconds. And what that has been leading to is a population expansion that today is over eight billion people, and we’re moving towards 10 billion people on the planet. And the reason 10 billion people is important is because when we hit that number, we have to increase our agricultural output by at least 70% in order to provide food security.
And even in today’s developed modern world—this includes in high-income countries like the United States—almost 50% of pregnancies are unintended. They were not planned pregnancies. And a large number of those are terminated in abortions, which is one of the main causes of maternal health problems. And so developing strategies for family planning and preventing unintended pregnancies is a major priority for public health agencies.
In the world of contraceptive development, on the female side there’s at least a dozen different strategies for women, and there’s only two for men. One is a vasectomy, which is often permanent, even though some are reversible, and the other is a condom. And there are currently no strategies to inhibit sperm production to prevent fertilization. Being able to curb the unintended pregnancies and also provide greater control, greater planning for population growth, innovation in contraception, is really important to us. So we’re interested in developing the male side. And we’re interested in preventing the final steps of sperm formation.
I compare it to a car assembly factory. The process of making sperm in testicular tissue is a multi-step process. It starts with a very undifferentiated cell and ends up with a very specialized cell that has this unique head, a unique DNA, in that it only has one set of chromosomes, and then a long tail that propels it and allows for fertilization. So, like a car assembly factory, all the pieces are being added along the way. And what we’re trying to prevent is putting the tires on or putting the doors on the car at the very end. And by doing that, it’s likely that we can have rapid reversibility. Whereas if we stop the process way in the beginning, the chances of reversibility are less. So we’re looking for mechanisms of the final steps in how sperm are assembled before they even leave testicular tissue. I like to say, “Once it’s left the factory, you can’t get it back.” So we’re looking at understanding core mechanisms that regulate that final step in sperm formation. And if we can target those for inhibition, then we might have a really rapid, reversible contraceptive strategy.
And on the food animal side, we’re trying to improve how we feed the world going forward in a changing climate, changing environment, by building traits in animals for the purposes of resiliency against infectious diseases, resiliency and efficiency in growth and development, improving the welfare of the animal, and improving their reproductive performance. Because to change the characteristics of a population of animals, mechanisms of heredity are imperative, and that means sperm and eggs. Animals have to be able to reproduce efficiently. So we’re working on two ways to help the pressing issue of global population expansion. One, how do we feed the growing global population more efficiently? And two, how do we curb and slow down population growth in a more strategic way?
The other thing that I’d add is that both of these areas, whether it’s male contraceptive development or whether it’s building resiliency in food animals to feed the future, require some sort of commercialization in order to get them from the lab into the public domain. And entities like the Washington Research Foundation and their funding support is important for us to advance from lab to public.
WRF supported Dr. Oatley’s male contraceptive research with a technology commercialization grant of $100,000 in 2023. This research has received additional funding from sources including the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Oatley’s food-animal research has received funding from sources including the Washington State Department of Agriculture.
More at https://labs.wsu.edu/jon-oatley/.