Brian Hermann
University of Texas at San Antonio, TX·Biology
Sperm production is a long assembly line of cell types, and both halves of this lab's work use that line as a tool. One project asks whether temporarily shutting the line down with a drug could give men a safe, reversible, non-hormonal contraceptive.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Pharmacology
- Topics
spermatogenesis
male contraception
protein degradation
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Identify small molecules that bind RBM46, the germ-cell-specific RNA-binding protein required for sperm production, through drug screening, and advance the best binders as starting points for targeted degraders.
- Build and validate RBM46 PROTACs, two-headed molecules that tag a protein for destruction, confirming in cell assays that they degrade RBM46, then use medicinal chemistry to improve their drug-like properties.
- Determine whether optimized RBM46 degraders cause reversible infertility in mice and in marmosets, assessing sperm output and recovery after treatment stops.
- Generate mutant ARX alleles and reporter transgenes in marmoset induced pluripotent stem cells using CRISPR/Cas9, targeting a gene whose mutations cause cortical malformation, epilepsy and intellectual disability.
- Optimize the derivation of male germ cells from edited marmoset stem cells and their transplantation into recipient testes and testis grafts, aiming to produce sperm that carry the engineered alleles.
- Assess how ARX mutations alter marmoset cortical neuron development and migration, using stem-cell-derived brain organoids together with single-cell genomics to verify cell identity.
More about the research
The other uses male germ cells as a delivery route for precisely edited genes, so that a small monkey can become a workable model for human brain disease. Both rely on the same core skills: understanding how sperm-producing cells develop, reading them one cell at a time with single-cell genomics, and transplanting germ cells into recipient testes.
Why it matters
Roughly 45% of US pregnancies were unintended in 2011, and hundreds of women die daily worldwide from pregnancy and childbirth complications, yet men have almost no reversible contraceptive options; a drug that degrades RBM46 could add a non-hormonal oral choice if it proves safe and reversible. Separately, a gene-edited marmoset model could give researchers studying epilepsy, intellectual disability and other brain disorders a primate system whose neurobiology better matches humans than rodents do.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kellee Siegfried
University of Massachusetts-Boston, MA·Biology
Identify the testis RNAs bound directly by Adad1, an RNA binding protein needed to maintain zebrafish sperm stem cells. Compare these RNAs in adad1 mutant and normal testes to see whether Adad1 stabilizes or destabilizes them.
Haiqi Chen
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Genetics
Map ligand–receptor interactions, where signaling molecules bind receptors on neighboring cells, between human spermatogonial stem cells and their niche using spatial transcriptomics on intact testis tissue sections.
Sowmya Yelamanchili
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Neuroscience
Examine neuron function and damage to synapses and mitochondria caused by combined HIV infection and methamphetamine exposure in 3D cerebral organoids containing microglia, the brain's immune cells.
The school
University of Texas at San Antonio: 10 labs on PI Pages, $172M a year on research, 129 research doctorates a year.
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