Adrenocorticoids synthesis

Inhibitors of the adrenocorticoid synthesis [79] neutralize counter irritation effects suggesting participation of the symphato-adrenal system. The first evidence for the involvement of neutral glucans in the induction of adrenocorticoid release was reported by Wang and Zhu [73]. A P-glucan from Omphalia lapidescens which has shown antiinflammatory activity in animal models, was able to increase the... 

Since rheumatoid arthritis was (and is) a grave and crippling disease, with a h h Incidence, there was a tremendous incentive to provide cortisone by an efficient synthetic technique. Sarett, among others, had been working on the partial synthesis of adrenocorticoid hormones, and in 1946 he achieved the first synthesis of cortisone. The cortisone for the Hench-Kendall clinical experiment was prepared at Merck based on synthetic methods devised by Sarett and by KendaU and his co-workers. The starting material was deoxycholic acid, which was readily available from bovine... 

In summary, microbiology applied to steroid chemistry has resulted in major contributions to technology, medicine, and science. Murray and Peterson, and Perlman and Fried laid the basis for the efficient application of microbiology to the synthesis of antiinflammatory steroids. The renewed interest in the field which they provoked led then to the one finding which was directly implicated in an improvement of therapy, namely, the application of microbial 1-dehydrc enation to the preparation of synthetic adrenocorticoid substances in our laboratory. Studies of mechanism which followed have clarified certain aspects of the stereochemistry and mechanism of microbial transformations and have established relationships with the larger corpus of knowledge of enzymatic chemistry. 

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