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Updated: Aug 9, 2025

Atomic Scale Structural Studies of Macromolecular Assemblies by Solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Published on: September 17, 2017
Residual Dipolar Coupling Based Conformational Analysis Allows the Configurational Assessment of Steroids with up to
Luca Venturi1, Emanuela Bua2, Giulia Caputo3
1Preclinical Analytics and Early Formulations Department, Chiesi Farmaceutici Spa, Largo Belloli 11/A, 43123, Parma, PR, Italy.
Abstract:
Residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) induced by anisotropic media have been proved as a powerful tool for the structure elucidation of organic molecules in solution in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) based analysis. The value of dipolar couplings to solve complex conformational and configurational problems represents indeed an appealing analytical tool for the pharmaceutical industry particularly focusing on the stereochemistry characterization of NCEs since the early phase of the drug development process. In our work, RDCs were used for the conformational and configurational study of synthetic steroids with multiple stereocenters - prednisone and beclomethasone dipropionate (BDP) -. For both molecules the correct relative configuration was identified among all the possible diastereoisomers (32 and 128 respectively) arising from the compounds stereogenic carbons. Only for prednisone the use of additional experimental data (i. e. rOes) was necessary to resolve the right stereochemical structure.
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