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Russell Earl Marker was an American chemist who invented the octane rating system when he was working at the Ethyl Corporation. Later in his career, he went on to found a steroid industry in Mexico when he successfully made semisynthetic progesterone from chemical constituents found in Mexican yams in a process known as Marker degradation. This eventually led to the development at Syntex of the combined oral contraceptive pill and synthetic cortisone – and to the development of the Mexican barbasco trade.
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Dioscorea composita, or barbasco, is a species of yam in the genus Dioscorea, native to Mexico. It is notable for its role in the production of diosgenin, which is a precursor for the synthesis of hormones such as progesterone. Russell Marker developed the extraction and manufacture of hormones from D. mexicana at Syntex, starting the trade of D. composita in Mexico. Marker also discovered that the composita variety had a much higher content of diosgenin than the mexicana variety, and therefore it came to replace the latter in the production of synthetic hormones.
The Mexican barbasco trade was the trade of the diosgenin-rich yam species Dioscorea mexicana, Dioscorea floribunda and Dioscorea composita which emerged in Mexico in the 1950s as part of the Mexican steroid industry. The trade consisted in Mexican campesinos harvesting the root in the jungle, selling it to middlemen who brought it to processing plants where the root was fermented and the diosgenin extracted and sold to pharmaceutical companies such as Syntex who used it to produce synthetic hormones.
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In organic chemistry, alkynylation is an addition reaction in which a terminal alkyne is added to a carbonyl group to form an α-alkynyl alcohol.
Progestogen-only injectable contraceptives (POICs) are a form of hormonal contraception and progestogen-only contraception that are administered by injection and providing long-lasting birth control. As opposed to combined injectable contraceptives, they contain only a progestogen without an estrogen, and include two progestin preparations:
References
- ↑ Gereffi, Gary (1983). The Pharmaceutical Industry and Dependency in the Third World (2017 reprint ed.). Princeton University Press: Princeton. p. 83. ISBN 9781400886227 . Retrieved 11 January 2021.
- ↑ Laveaga, Gabriela Soto (2009). Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780822391968 . Retrieved 11 January 2021.
- ↑ "The 'Marker Degradation' & Creation of the Mexican Steroid Hormone Industry 1938–1945" (PDF). ACS.org. 1999.
- ↑ McFadden, Robert D. (2019-06-23). "George Rosenkranz, 102, a Developer of the Birth Control Pill, Is Dead". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-02-03.
- ↑ Gereffi, Gary (1983). The Pharmaceutical Industry and Dependency in the Third World (2017 reprint ed.). Princeton University Press: Princeton. p. 110. ISBN 9781400886227 . Retrieved 11 January 2021.
- ↑ Freudenheim, Milt (3 May 1994). "Roche Set To Acquire Syntex". New York Times.
- ↑ Oremus, Will (September 2, 2008). "Roche confirms closing of Palo Alto complex". San Jose Mercury News.
- ↑ Sheyner, Gennady (November 21, 2011). "VMware unveils plan for massive campus expansion". Palo Alto Online. Retrieved 3 September 2021.
- ↑ Rosenkranz had fled Nazi Germany to avoid the eventual Holocaust; while in Cuba en route to South America, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor stranded him there. He was able to work there for the duration of the war.
- ↑ Marshall, Eliot (1983-06-10). "The murky world of toxicity testing" (PDF). Science. 220 (4602): 1130–1132. Bibcode:1983Sci...220.1130M. doi:10.1126/science.6857237. PMID 6857237 . Retrieved 2012-07-27.
- ↑ "The Scandal in Chemical Testing". The New York Times. 1983-05-16. Retrieved 2012-07-27.
The problem was discovered only by accident, when a Government official looking for something else pulled out a file of IBT data by mistake.
- ↑ Merrell, Paul (Winter 1981). "The Industrial Bio-Test Caper" (PDF). NCAP News. 2 (3): 2–4. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-02-23. Retrieved 2012-08-05.
- ↑ Foster, Douglas; Mark Dowie; Steve Hubbell; Irene Moosen; Peter Waldman; Center for Investigative Reporting (June 1982). "Poisoned Research". Mother Jones. 7 (5): 38–40, 42–43, 45–48. Retrieved 2012-07-28.
