Abstract
THE hormone of the anterior pituitary lobe has excited great interest over the past twenty-five years, and although results the greatest theoretical significance have accrued from the large amount of research carried out on this subject, little of practical importance has (developed therefrom until recently. Within the past year, interest has been particularly directed to the adrenocorticotropic hormone of the anterior pituitary gland for two reasons. First, as worad be expected from the action of cortisone, adrenocorticotropin is effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Secondly, Li and others have shown that the biological activity of adrenocorticotropin can be retained during the degradation of this protein hormone to a moderately sized peptide. The synthesis of such a peptide, the activity of which would be of the greatest interest in practical medicine, is therefore within the realm of possibility.
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Pituitary Adrenocorticotropin : Research at Cambridge. Nature 164, 1117 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/1641117a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1641117a0