- Person
- Carl Djerassi
- Lived
- 1923–2015
- Field
- Chemistry
- From
- Austrian-American
The story
In 1948 scientists at the Mayo Clinic announced that cortisone, a hormone of the adrenal gland, had remarkable effects on rheumatoid arthritis. Demand soared, but cortisone, like other steroid hormones, was scarce and extremely expensive to obtain from animal sources, and chemists raced to find a cheaper way to make it.
Carl Djerassi, a young chemist who had fled Nazi Vienna as a teenager, was eager to work on steroids, but at CIBA in New Jersey that research was reserved for the company's headquarters in Switzerland. In 1949 George Rosenkranz, the head scientist at Syntex in Mexico City, invited him to join that company as associate director of research. Djerassi later said one attraction was that Syntex owned a modern DU spectrophotometer. Syntex, founded in 1944 by the chemist Russell Marker and colleagues, was already making male and female sex hormones from diosgenin, a steroid compound obtained from a wild Mexican yam, and it was now trying to make cortisone the same way.
In 1951 Djerassi's group succeeded in synthesising cortisone from diosgenin. Their process improved on a procedure developed by Merck and Company, using a cheaper raw material and requiring only about half as many steps. The same year, the same laboratory produced norethindrone, the first highly active oral progestin, which became a key ingredient of the contraceptive pill.
Other groups soon reported their own routes to cortisone. In the end the Upjohn Company proved most successful commercially, using a microorganism to convert progesterone into cortisone, but Syntex benefited too, because it was commissioned to supply Upjohn with the progesterone. The Syntex work showed how plant compounds could become a cheap, plentiful starting point for steroid medicines.
Djerassi kept a relationship with Syntex for twenty years, later returning as vice president of research and serving as president of Syntex Research in Palo Alto. In 2000 the Chemical Heritage Foundation, now the Science History Institute, awarded him its Othmer Gold Medal for his multiple careers in chemistry.
Why it matters
Cheaper routes to cortisone helped turn a scarce wonder drug into an everyday treatment for arthritis, inflammation and many other conditions.
About Carl Djerassi
Refugee from Nazi Vienna whose Syntex team in Mexico City first made norethindrone, a key oral contraceptive; later a novelist and playwright.
More about Carl Djerassi
- Carl Djerassi helped build DENDRAL, a pioneering AIIn 1965 Carl Djerassi, Joshua Lederberg and Edward Feigenbaum devised DENDRAL at Stanford, one of the first uses of artificial intelligence in biomedical research.
- Carl Djerassi helped create an early antihistamineAs a 19-year-old chemist at CIBA in New Jersey in 1942–43, Carl Djerassi helped develop Pyribenzamine, one of the first commercial antihistamines and his first patent.
- Carl Djerassi published more than 1,200 scientific papersCarl Djerassi pioneered the use of mass spectrometry and optical rotatory dispersion to decode the structures of steroids and alkaloids, publishing more than 1,200 papers.
- Carl Djerassi pioneered gentler insect controlIn 1968 Carl Djerassi founded Zoecon to control pests with modified insect hormones instead of broad poisons, work honoured with the US National Medal of Technology in 1991.
- Two chemists wrote the play Oxygen togetherIn 1999 Carl Djerassi and the Nobel chemist Roald Hoffmann co-wrote Oxygen, a play about the discovery of oxygen and about what it means to be a scientist.
- Carl Djerassi gave his Paul Klee collection to museumsCarl Djerassi assembled one of the most significant private collections of Paul Klee's art and arranged for it to go to the Albertina in Vienna and SFMOMA in San Francisco.
- Carl Djerassi turned his ranch into a haven for artistsAfter his daughter Pamela, an artist, died in 1978, Carl Djerassi turned his California cattle ranch into the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, a retreat for working artists.
- Carl Djerassi invented science-in-fictionStarting with Cantor's Dilemma in 1989, Carl Djerassi wrote novels in a genre he called science-in-fiction, showing readers how real scientists think, compete and behave.
- Carl Djerassi helped create the first oral contraceptiveIn 1951 Carl Djerassi, a refugee from Nazi Austria, co-invented norethisterone in Mexico City, the first highly active progestin that worked by mouth and a key ingredient of the Pill.
Sources
- Carl Djerassi Science History Institute
- Carl Djerassi Wikipedia
- Carl Djerassi Science History Institute
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.