Indian innovator Lakshminarayanan Ragupathy in Gates Foundation's search for next generation condom
By ET Bureau | 22 Nov, 2013
NEW DELHI: What will the next-generation of condom be like? Will it be made of ever-so-thin, human skin-like cow tendons but sourced possibly from slaughterhouses? Or, will it be smart enough to wrap itself around the user? Or, will it come with an applicator so that you can go hands-free and errors-free? Or, will it indeed be made with the wonder material of our time - the super-strong, super-stretchable graphene?
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which threw open the Next Generation Condom Challenge in March, shortlisted on Wednesday night 11 innovators - chosen from over 800 applications - for a $100,000 grant. And one of them is from India - Lakshminarayanan Ragupathy of HLL Lifecare in Thiruvananthapuram. Ragupathy and his team are up against six researchers from the US, two from the UK and one each from South Africa and Australia.
But he swears by graphene - a single layer of carbon atoms densely packed in a honeycomb structure. Graphene is a delightful blend of contradictions: it is a million times thinner than a sheet of paper, 200 times stronger than steel and ever more flexible than rubber. "It is the strongest stretchable material ever known," says the 36-year-old researcher at HLL, almost wondering what can be better suited for condoms. Formerly Hindustan Latex, HLL churns out 1.6 billion condoms a year, making it one of the world's leading manufacturers. But this is a big leap of faith even for the Moods maker.
Ragupathy got fixated on graphene while doing his post-doctoral at the University of Manchester. "I was there in 2010 when two Manchester University professors - Sir Andre Geim and Sir Kostya Novoselov - got the Nobel Prize for Physics for extracting graphene," he says. It soon became an obsession.
"By incorporating elements of graphene into latex, we can reduce the thickness of condoms - currently about .07 mm - to less than .04 mm," says Ragupathy. Thinner is good, but not good enough for the Gates, is it? "Graphene has a large surface area - one gram is sufficient to cover half a football field - so it can be loaded with drugs like antiretrovirals and spermicides," says Ragupathy. That ticks a big box for the Gates Foundation, which wants "substantial benefits for global health, both in terms of reducing the incidence of unplanned pregnancies and in prevention of infection with HIV".
Still not good enough. New material should "enhance or preserve pleasure", says the challenge website, so that men and women would go for it. Ragupathy talks physics. "Graphene is a great conductor of heat so that couples will not miss each other's warmth," he says. That's so much better than cold latex.
The $100,000 grant called for only a very quiet celebration at the HLL. No popping of champagne at this quiet Kerala lab. Raghupathy and his two co-investigators, A Kumaran and G Rajamohan, are already at work, extricating graphene from graphite.
He has 18 more months to get it right. If it gets a nod from the Gates Foundation, he and his team will get a million dollars to go ahead with clinical trials. If the graphene condom comes to the market, it will be the biggest innovation in condom manufacturing in over 50 years - an industry that had to be satisfied with just ribs and dots as inventions.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which threw open the Next Generation Condom Challenge in March, shortlisted on Wednesday night 11 innovators - chosen from over 800 applications - for a $100,000 grant. And one of them is from India - Lakshminarayanan Ragupathy of HLL Lifecare in Thiruvananthapuram. Ragupathy and his team are up against six researchers from the US, two from the UK and one each from South Africa and Australia.
But he swears by graphene - a single layer of carbon atoms densely packed in a honeycomb structure. Graphene is a delightful blend of contradictions: it is a million times thinner than a sheet of paper, 200 times stronger than steel and ever more flexible than rubber. "It is the strongest stretchable material ever known," says the 36-year-old researcher at HLL, almost wondering what can be better suited for condoms. Formerly Hindustan Latex, HLL churns out 1.6 billion condoms a year, making it one of the world's leading manufacturers. But this is a big leap of faith even for the Moods maker.
Ragupathy got fixated on graphene while doing his post-doctoral at the University of Manchester. "I was there in 2010 when two Manchester University professors - Sir Andre Geim and Sir Kostya Novoselov - got the Nobel Prize for Physics for extracting graphene," he says. It soon became an obsession.
"By incorporating elements of graphene into latex, we can reduce the thickness of condoms - currently about .07 mm - to less than .04 mm," says Ragupathy. Thinner is good, but not good enough for the Gates, is it? "Graphene has a large surface area - one gram is sufficient to cover half a football field - so it can be loaded with drugs like antiretrovirals and spermicides," says Ragupathy. That ticks a big box for the Gates Foundation, which wants "substantial benefits for global health, both in terms of reducing the incidence of unplanned pregnancies and in prevention of infection with HIV".
Still not good enough. New material should "enhance or preserve pleasure", says the challenge website, so that men and women would go for it. Ragupathy talks physics. "Graphene is a great conductor of heat so that couples will not miss each other's warmth," he says. That's so much better than cold latex.
The $100,000 grant called for only a very quiet celebration at the HLL. No popping of champagne at this quiet Kerala lab. Raghupathy and his two co-investigators, A Kumaran and G Rajamohan, are already at work, extricating graphene from graphite.
He has 18 more months to get it right. If it gets a nod from the Gates Foundation, he and his team will get a million dollars to go ahead with clinical trials. If the graphene condom comes to the market, it will be the biggest innovation in condom manufacturing in over 50 years - an industry that had to be satisfied with just ribs and dots as inventions.
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