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Metabolism of Progesterone-4-¹⁴C by Adrenal Tissue from a Patient with Cushing's Syndrome¹,^,2

The John Collins Warren Laboratories of the Huntington Memorial Hospital of Harvard University at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Biological Chemistry, Harvard Medical School Boston, Massachusetts
Department of Chemical Pathology, King's College Hospital Medical School Denmark Hill, London, S.E.5, England

Minced adrenal tissue from a woman with Cushing's syndrome was incubated with progesterone-4-¹⁴C. After addition of carrier steroids and their reisolation by gradient elution partition chromatography and paper chromatography, radiochemical purity was established by repeated crystallization, derivative formation and countercurrent distribution. The following metabolic products were identified: ⁴-androstene-3,17-dione (2.3%),11β-hydroxy-⁴-androstene-3,17-dione (0.3%), 17,21-dihydroxy-⁴-pregnene-3,20-dione (1.2%), cortisol (2.5%), deoxycorticosterone (6.2%), 16hydroxy-⁴-pregnene-3,20-dione (24.8%), 2 unidentified compounds (18.1%) and unreacted progesterone (9.1%).

¹ This is publication No. 1202 of the Cancer Commission of Harvard University. This work was supported by Grants CA 01393 and CA 02421 from the National Cancer Institute, USPHS, and Grant P95 from the American Cancer Society, Inc. A preliminary account of this work was presented at the Sixth International Congress of Biochemistry, New York, July, 1964. Congress Abstracts VII-1.

² The authors thank Professors A. Haddow, E. Boyland and D. W. Smithers for making available to one of us (L. L. E.) laboratory facilities in the Chester Beatty Research Institute and the Radiobiology Department of the Royal Marsden Hospital.

³ Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, 1962–64.

Present address: University of Lagos Medical School, Lagos, Nigeria.

⁴ Permanent Faculty Fellow of the American Cancer Society.

Received January 6, 1965.

Accepted February 4, 1965.