Word: strophanthus
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...victims of rheumatoid arthritis impatiently awaiting a boost in the tiny supply of cortisone, there was another slender ray of hope this week. While it might take years to make the hormone from seeds of the over-trumpeted vine Strophanthus sarmentosus (TIME, Aug. 29), a more abundant and more accessible plant has been named as a source of the raw material...
...finished the complicated job of making cortisone from yams, but researchers could start trying at once. No costly task force (like the one sent to Africa to gather Strophanthus seeds) is needed to get the yams. Sometimes weighing 30 pounds, they grow in many parts of Mexico and Central America...
...Prayers? Last week, hopes were briskly and perhaps brashly fanned for a short cut in production. Science Reporter William L. Laurence of the New York 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 treatment, said of the report: "Interesting, but I don't think that is the answer." In the "four or five years" before enough seeds could be grown, he said, "we expect to have cortisone available in much larger supply from other sources." In the Merck laboratories, the Strophanthus product, sarmentogenin (first isolated in 1915), had already been carefully considered. The synthesis of cortisone from sarmentogenin, a spokesman said, would be "an extremely difficult matter." Its chemical structure is similar to the 17th intermediary product in the current process, he admitted, but that similarity by no means assures that...
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