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Steroidal Hormone-Related Diseases

Steroidal endocrines control normal body functions such as conception, growth, sexual development and aging. The same hormones also play a role in disorders such as osteoporosis and hormone-dependent cancers. Effective, selective, safe hormone-based therapies are needed more than ever, and new opportunities exist now that the rapidly expanding field of molecular biology can pinpoint more and better targets for therapeutic intervention. SRI's steroid research team can help.

Research

SRI has more than 40 years of experience in developing novel steroidal therapeutics, including male and female contraceptives, anticancer drugs, cholesterol-lowering agents, and compounds for hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Through NIH grants and contracts, we have amassed a large library of compounds-literally thousands of estrogens, progestins, androgens, glucocorticoids and anabolic agents as well as effective inhibitors of steroidal functions. Extensive receptor binding studies help us understand the activities of the compounds at the molecular level. Through this experience, we have built an extensive database on the structure activity relationships (SARs) of steroids. As exciting new discoveries in molecular biology continue to identify new endocrine-dependent targets for therapeutic intervention, our experience and databases are increasingly powerful tools to help identify and develop novel therapeutics. We continue to partner with pharmaceutical companies in collaborative research to discover and develop new steroidal therapeutics.

Our current focus areas include

Women's health: Women's health issues have taken center stage over the last few years, with breast cancer a primary focus. Because breast cancer can be driven by estrogen, we are developing selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), pure antiestrogens that we believe will be effective against tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer without exacerbating other estrogen-related maladies such as osteoporosis. We have discovered agonistic SERMs that do not contribute to breast cancer but have potential use in hormone replacement therapy. We are also developing steroid-based compounds that affect the transport and metabolism of stored estrogen forms, thus decreasing the amount of estrogen available to a tumor.

Men's health: As the male population ages, prostate cancer has increased dramatically. We are investigating a new class of orally active steroid-based anticancer drugs for treatment of hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) and benign hyperplasia. We continue the search for effective male contraceptives.

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       Last Updated Mar 19, 2009