"PSEUDO-CRYSTALLOFERMENTATION" OF STEROID: A NEW PROCESS FOR PREPARING PREDNISOLONE BY A MICROORGANISM

The present authors, in this paper, reported a new and a peculiar phenomenon caused by a microorganism concerning with steroidal fermentation and suggested an economical process for the industrial preparation of prednisolone from hydrocortisone. In this process the growing culture of Arthrobacter simplex ATCC 6946 was employed as microorganism, hydrocortisone in solid state was used as substrate and the fermentation was carried out aerobically in this heterogeneous phase. The enzymic reaction of the organism proceeded onesidely to form prednisolone (Δ1-hydrocortisone), and thus, the substrate in solid form was apparently transformed into the crystals of the product in the heterogeneous reaction mixture. For this microbial reaction the authors proposed the name "pseudo-crystallofermentation."