CHAPTER I - Introduction

Abstract

Microbial transformations of organic compounds have been known in an empirical way from the dawn of history. In almost every civilization, primitive or advanced, man has practiced the fermentation of fruit, grain, or milk to obtain intoxicating and nourishing dietary factors. The rational application of these early techniques could come only after the scientific practice of organic chemistry and microbiology was begun. A sufficient understanding had developed by 1857 to provide the necessary background for the work of Louis Pasteur on the fermentation of sugar to lactic acid and ethanol. The most in the history of microbial transformations of steroids had been the synthesis of the hormones of the adrenal gland and of their more powerful and therapeutically selective synthetic analogs. Studies of the composition of steroids in bovine and other mammalian adrenal glands by Kendall, Reichstein, and Wintersteiner, and their respective collaborators, begun in the early 1930s, which led eventually to the isolation, characterization, and structural proof of cortisone. This chapter discusses the significance of discovery of anti-inflammatory action of cortisone, first hydroxylations and dehydrogenations, and manufacture of natural and synthetic corticosteroids.