Syntex

Laboratorios Syntex SA was a pharmaceutical company formed in Mexico City in 1944 by Russell Marker to manufacture therapeutic steroids from the Mexican yam.

Syntex chemists synthesized cortisone from diosgenin, a phytosteroid contained in Mexican yams. This synthesis was more economical than the previous Merck & Co. synthesis, which started with bile acids.

Syntex was integrated into the Roche group in 1994.

Prominent researchers

• Russell Marker co-founded the company in 1944. In May 1945, realizing that he was being left out of the company's profits, he left the company. When he took his notebooks, the company was unable to continue producing progesterone because Marker had done the synthesis himself and had coded the reagent bottles.
• George Rosenkranz had studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and was conducting pharmaceutical research in Cuba. He joined Syntex in 1945 to replace Marker. He hired Djerassi in 1949.
• Carl Djerassi went to work at Syntex in 1949 as the associate director of chemical research. He remained there through 1951, leaving to join the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) starting in 1952.
• Alejandro Zaffaroni developed procedures for identifying and separating steroids using paper chromatography while studying at the University of Rochester, and joined Syntex as a research biochemist in 1951. He became vice-president in 1956, and was appointed president of Syntex's U.S. subsidiary in Palo Alto, California in 1962.
• Luis E. Miramontes moved from UNAM to Syntex in 1950 as a researcher under Djerassi. He performed the first synthesis of an orally active progestin on 15 October 1951. The steroid 19-nor-17 alpha-ethynyltestosterone, with the generic name of norethistrone or norethindrone, was the first orally active progestin, which led to the development of the first oral contraceptives.
• Jerzy Rzedowski worked as an explorer botanist. He later became the most prominent plant scientist in Mexico.
• Ralph Dorfman Joined the company as a consultant in 1960, eventually serving as President of Syntex Research from 1967–1973

Birth control pill

Syntex submitted its compound to a laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, for biological evaluation, and found it was the most active, orally-effective progestational hormone of its time. Syntex submitted a patent application in November 1951. In August 1953, G.D. Searle & Co. filed for a patent for the synthesis of the double-bond isomer 13 of norethindrone called norethynodrel. Norethynodrel is converted into norethindrone under acidic conditions, such as those in the human stomach, and the new patent did not infringe on the Syntex patent. Searle obtained approval to market norethynodrel before Syntex received its approval. By 1964 three 3 companies including Syntex were marketing 2-mg doses of the Syntex norethindrone.

References

• Carl Djerassi Steroids. 1994 Jan;59(1):58-9
• Max F. Perutz I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 1998
• Carl Djerassi This Man's Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill. Oxford University Press 2001
• Lara V. Marks Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 2001
• Carl Djerassi Steroids Made It Possible. American Chemical Society, Washington DC, 1990