Discovery of Progesterne and other contraceptive steroids

Evolution of steroids, birth control pills in particular:- Ludwing Haberlandt  in 1920s was first to demonstrate that the ovarian extracts of animals , if administered  orally to mice could prevent fertilization . But this process required large amounts of ovarian extracts and this was supported by  Edward Doisy who also  noticed that to process  12 mg of oestradiol as much as   80,000  sow ovaries have to be collected.

Later Russell Marker,  M.Sc. in chemistry who worked at Rockefeller Institute  worked on configuration and optical rotation of  different organic compounds from 1927 to 1935 . Russell noticed that 2500 pregnant pigs were required to produce 1 mg of progesterone. In 1939 Marker Russell solved the problem of synthesizing large amount of steroids from plant source , disregarding animal source like ovaries or urine of pregnant pigs. He could discover that few plants do harbour  good amount of disogenin (sapogenin) .Such plants were Lily,  few algae & notably yam. The process by which he was able to extract progesterone was called as Markers degradation theory(1935).. Such plants were plentifully acailable at Mexico. Subsequently this product was patented by Syntex, later  Botanica –Mex and then finally to Organon(Holland) in 1946.

R marker died in 1995 at the age of 92yrs. By this time frame people also tried to synthesize testosterone from Mexican yam and later cortisone from same plant (Carl Djerassi).The research on steroid chemistry continued at a fast speed after 1935 and in 1951  ethindrone was first synthesized at Ohio .

The baton thereafter was taken up by Gregory Goodwin Pincus who was born in 1903 at New Jersey  who  first invented IVF in of rabbit eggs . Pincus died in 1967 but during hs  lifetime (1903-1967) he along with M C Chang make OCP globally popular. It is claimed that  M C Chang is the first person to discover capacitation od sperms. It is M C Chang  affirmed that it is progesterone which inhibits ovulation in rabbits. Financially and morally such two dignified scientist were backed up by  two great lady Margaret Sanger and Ms Katherine McCormick ( a rich woman) accelerated the process of Oral contraceptive pills. In 1951 Carl Djerrasi synthesized the first orally active progestin norethindrone form its plant   source . In 1953   Cotton synthesized Norethyrodrel. During the process of synthesis of norethynodrel a small amount of the estrogen mestranol was serendipitously produced as a byproduct. This discovery   led to the introduction of the first OC in the United  States  in 1960  that contained a large  amount of these compounds  namely 150 mcg  of  mestranol  and 9.85  mg of norethynodrel .  During  the next  several decades  after  scientists learned how  to independently  synthesize    mestranol and  Ethinyl  estradiol  from the plant  source . EE gradually replaced mestranol   in OC formulations.

    In 1957, US FDA approved first ever Oral Pill only for treatment of menstrual disorders and in 1960 for contraception. for women brand name was ENOVID(Searle )