The Family Leads NEXT Life Sciences $2.5 Million Funding Round for Plan A Male Birth Control
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON Associated Press
JANUARY 2024
LOS ANGELES—NEXT Life Sciences, the maker of the male contraceptive product Plan A™, announced today that it has secured an oversubscribed $2.5M round of funding to help advance its mission of bringing Plan A™ to market. The Family, a high-impact startup accelerator led the round with participation from Transform VC and a combination of angel investors and early-stage Venture funds including entrepreneur Brock Pierce, Transform VC, StartupHealth, Pay It Forward Venture Capital, Particular Ventures, Keno Peer, Unpopular Ventures, and Joy Fund, bringing total seed funding to date to $4M.
The Family’s founder Ryan Breslow who is known for building the multi-billion-dollar company Bolt and his newest venture Love.com, will join NEXT Life Sciences as a strategic advisor and provide insights needed to bring Plan A™ to market.
“My mission for Family is to back top founders working on truly world-changing products and bring them to market more quickly,” said The Family Founder Ryan Breslow. “Plan A™ is unleashing bodily autonomy; it’s giving men the ability to share responsibility over long-term contraceptive decisions. I’m all-in.”
“We couldn’t be more thrilled that the Family recognizes the potential impact for Plan A™ and we’re honored to welcome Ryan as a strategic advisor to help guide our team as we work to bring a revolutionary contraception to the market,” said NEXT Life Sciences, Inc. Founder and CEO L. R. Fox. “With Plan A™, our goal is to change lives by giving men the ability to participate equally in family planning, so that couples have a more equitable relationship and the tools needed to be intentional about their futures.”
NEXT is developing Plan A™ to be a non-hormonal, long-acting, and reversible on-demand, contraceptive for men. The design of Plan A utilizes a hydrogel that acts as a flexible filter to block the flow of sperm within the male vas deferens, preventing pregnancy. The hydrogel used within Plan A™ is commonly known as Vasalgel®, a technology that earned significant attention during its 10 years of development with the non-profit Parsemus Foundation and shows a promising track record of success from pre-clinical data. The exclusive worldwide license for Vasalgel® was acquired by NEXT in 2022, with the goal to bring this technology through FDA authorization and finally to market.
NEXT plans to start clinical trials for Plan A™ in 2024, followed by submission to the FDA.
About NEXT Life Sciences
NEXT Life Sciences, Inc. (NEXT) is a medical device company striving to transform lives through the development of its lead program, Plan A™, designed to provide a non-hormonal, long-lasting, and reversible contraceptive solution for men. NEXT’s executive management team and board members have a proven track record of leadership across early-stage research, product development, and global commercialization, having served in leadership roles at successful medical device and contraceptive companies that developed and launched products that achieved iconic status. For more information, visit https://www.nextlifesciences.org/ and https://www.planaformen.com/.
Disclaimer
All forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Statements within this document have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Plan A™ is currently not approved by FDA for commercial distribution.