Medicinal Steroids (Dr. Hana Chodounská)

The research group of Medicinal Steroids was created at IOCB as a response to demands of steroid ligands for newly discovered steroid receptors, especially on neurones. The aim is to obtain new molecules of therapeutic and biological interest. Participation in collaborative multidisciplinary research projects with academic and industrial groups is considered essential. The objectives are synthesis of novel neuroactive steroids with better pharmaceutical properties (metabolic stability, solubility) and the testing of their biological characteristics, preparation of specific steroid compounds required for the biological study of the role of neurosteroids in vivo, synthesis of steroid molecular probes for molecular biology exploration and the screening synthesized steroid compounds with a battery of available biological tests for non-classical steroid-receptor interactions.