Word: biles
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...Journal of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Russell E. Marker, veteran hormone researcher, reported that botogenin, a substance providing a short cut to one of the 37 stages in the expensive, laborious transformation of ox bile into cortisone, was found in a common yam of tropical America, Dioscorea mexicana...
Cortisone is made, in 37 chemical steps over a six-month period, from the bile of slaughtered oxen (40 head are required for a single daily dose). Merck & Co., who make it, produce only about 1½ ounces a week. Acutely conscious of the desperate demand, research chemists have been plugging away at the problem, trying to speed the process and eventually mass-produce the drug...
...Times reported in a Page One story that "The seed of an African plant holds the answer to the prayers of millions for cortisone...Strophanthus sarmentosus is a potentially unlimited source of the raw material for cortisone." This material, he said, is "more closely related to cortisone than ox bile acid, and will therefore require many fewer steps in its chemical conversion...It is 17 steps nearer to cortisone than bile acid...
Cortisone is even scarcer than ACTH. Merck & Co., who make it, in 37 tedious steps, from the bile of butchered cattle, expect to produce little more than 1½ ounces a week for the rest of the year. Last week it was announced that henceforth cortisone will be doled out to suitable hospitals and research institutions through a committee of the National Academy of Sciences. And Merck has stopped giving it away: the price now is $60 for a 300-milligram vial ($5,670 an ounce...
...Merck & Co. chemists, they developed a compound from the adrenal glands of cattle. It was called Compound E (full name: 17-hydroxy-11-de-hydrocorticosterone). Compound E belongs to the steroid group of body chemicals. So do the sex hormones (a link with relief during pregnancy) and some bile products of the liver (a link with jaundice). Compound E was obtained later from an element of bile. Seven months ago Mayo's began treating human patients...