Affiliation:
1. Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry, Endocrinology and Nephrology Unit, CHU de Québec Research Center-Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 4G2, Canada
2. Department of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Abstract
Steroid hormones play a crucial role in several aspects of human life, and steroidogenesis is the process by which hormones are produced from cholesterol using several enzymes that work in concert to obtain the appropriate levels of each hormone at the right time. Unfortunately, many diseases, such as cancer, endometriosis, and osteoporosis as examples, are caused by an increase in the production of certain hormones. For these diseases, the use of an inhibitor to block the activity of an enzyme and, in doing so, the production of a key hormone is a proven therapeutic strategy whose development continues. This account-type article focuses on seven inhibitors (compounds 1–7) and an activator (compound 8) of six enzymes involved in steroidogenesis, namely steroid sulfatase, aldo-keto reductase 1C3, types 1, 2, 3, and 12 of the 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases. For these steroid derivatives, three topics will be addressed: (1) Their chemical synthesis from the same starting material, estrone, (2) their structural characterization using nuclear magnetic resonance, and (3) their in vitro or in vivo biological activities. These bioactive molecules constitute potential therapeutic or mechanistic tools that could be used to better understand the role of certain hormones in steroidogenesis.
Subject
Chemistry (miscellaneous),Analytical Chemistry,Organic Chemistry,Physical and Theoretical Chemistry,Molecular Medicine,Drug Discovery,Pharmaceutical Science
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