Novel 5-aryl-1,3-dihydro-indole-2-thiones. potent, orally active progesterone receptor agonists

During the course of our studies on 3,3-disubstituted-5-aryloxindoles derived progesterone receptor (PR) antagonists we discovered that changing the amide funtionality to a thio-amide resulted in compounds displaying potent PR agonist activity. In this communication, the synthesis, structure activity relationships (SAR) and in vivo activity of various 5-arylthio-oxindoles will be discussed.