Steroid-protein conjugates. II. Preparation and characterization of conjugates of bovine serum albumin with progesterone, deoxycorticosterone, and estrone.

Conjugates of bovine serum albumin with progesterone, deoxycorticosterone, and estrone have now been synthesized as an extension of a program to prepare and characterize steroid-protein conjugates with the ultimate purpose of testing their ability to stimulate the formation of antihormonal antibodies (1). The steroid derivatives which were coupled to albumin are shown in Fig. 1. The synthetic approach followed was similar to that described earlier (l), except for the preparation of Compound I which was synthesized via the analogous pregnenolone derivative, according to the following scheme: