Synthesis of steroidal derivatives containing substituted, fused and spiro pyrazolines

An efficient and facile synthesis of fused, substituted and spiro pyrazoline steroid derivatives through a cycloaddition reaction of different α,β-unsaturated ketones with hydrazine acetate in acetic acid is reported. Depending on the starting material, the ring closure reaction provided a mixture of two steroidal pyrazoline epimers that were separated and studied by NMR techniques. In one case it was possible to isolate and characterize the hydrazone derivative as the reaction intermediate, which confirms the mechanism proposed in the literature [11,25,26].