Steroid-nucleosides.

A new class of potential chemotherapeutic agents consisting of steroids coupled with nucleoside bases is described. Such structures may be viewed as nucleosides in which the sugar moiety is replaced by a steroid molecule. We may therefore expect the nucleoside characteristics to give interference at the DNA level, resulting in the desired antitumor activity, whereas the steroid moiety may provide target specificity. A number of such coupling products were prepared and preliminary biologic studies are reported.