a total synthesis of estrone would be a great achievement for a personal laboratory; it's one asymmetrical reduction away from estradiol. (figuring out how to make something safe enough to put into a human body? that's another matter.) I've started to look into methods that have been published; there's some nifty ones.
this one (https://sci-hub.se/10.1002/anie.201404909) is fairly cute: a key step is the asymmetrical cyclization of the cyclopentadione 1a using a spectacular chiral acidic catalyst, a disulfonimide based on a twisted 1,1'-binaphthyl skeleton:
that establishes the geometry of the intermediate diene ("Torgov's diene") in a single step, so only one more asymmetrical reaction is needed: the final reduction from estrone to estradiol.
it's definitely a daydream, but without a pile of money for analytical equipment and a full complement of organic laboratory hardware, I can't see working on something like this. how would I verify stepwise reactions without being able to verify the structures of the products?
bleh. I'm depressing myself.
~Alyx