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The Accidental Birth of Oral Progestogens: How Ethisterone Changed Medicine
The Accidental Birth of Oral Progestogens: How Ethisterone Changed Medicine
Oral progestogen therapy was impossible until a 1938 Berlin lab accidentally made a compound that could survive stomach acid: ethisterone - a molecule born from a failed attempt to make oral testosterone that nonetheless bound the progesterone receptor with about 44% of progesterone’s affinity. How did a tweak meant to protect a hormone from digestion create a drug that let women take progestogen at home, and what consequences did the molecule’s androgenic past carry?
In this episode, we tell the story of four…
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