Steroid Reference Collection

The Steroid Reference Collection, which is maintained by the U.K. Medical Research Council and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, provides milligram or microgram samples of reference steroids for use in clinical or biochemical studies, including the development and standardisation of micro‐assays, chromatography, and mass spectrometry. The Collection also offers advice on chemical problems involving steroids, and an NMR service ( 1 H and 13 C) for the identification of steroids. The Collection now comprises over 4000 steroids, many of them donated by individual scientists or by the pharmaceutical industry. They include the steroid hormones and their metabolites, sterols, bile acids, synthetic analogues, and miscellaneous natural products related to steroids. A recent grant from the Medical Research Council provides for the Collection to continue until the year 1990, but with the requirement that users will in future be required to pay a ‘handling charge’ of £5 sterling per sample issued, to help towards the cost of the service. Users in the USA are at present exempted from this charge, under arrangements with the NIH. Enquiries, requests for information, lists of available steroids, or offers of samples for the Collection, should be addressed to: Professor D. N. Kirk, Curator of the Steroid Reference Collection, Department of Chemistry, Queen Mary College, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, England. (Please note that the Collection has moved from Westfield College.) Workers in the USA are asked to address enquiries or requests to: Dr David F. Johnson, Building 4, Room 141, National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA 20205.