The State - News from Aug. 12, 1985

A team of California scientists has discovered, with the help of genetic engineering, a key brain hormone that regulates human fertility, a member of the team said. Dr. Karoly Nikolics of the University of California at San Francisco said the finding may lead to new fertility drugs and contraceptives. The hormone controls fertility by allowing or inhibiting lactation in the female’s mammary glands, Nikolics said. He explained that it has long been known that “reproduction shuts down” with lactation. The discovery, detailed in two reports in the current issue of the British journal Nature, was made by a team from the university and Genentech, a biotechnology firm in South San Francisco that also employs Nikolics.