Robert W. Lancaster and colleagues from University College London, have investigated the phenomenon of ‘disappearing polymorphs’, using a 50 year old progesterone sample obtained from the University of Innsbruck archive.
Disappearing polymorphs are an unusual occurance, where a form that was previously considered to be stable and easy to make, suddenly becomes very difficult to obtain. The reasons for this are poorly understood, and here Lancaster looks into the case of the hormone progesterone, where the modern version suffers from a ‘disappearing polymorph’, which can be found in the 50 year old archived sample.
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Fifty-year old samples of progesterone demonstrate the complex role of synthetic impurities in stabilizing a metastable polymorph
Robert W. Lancaster, Lisa D. Harris and David Pearson
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00858C, Communication
