ABSTRACT
It is likely that the processes of steroid behavior are influenced differently by a particular steroid structural modification. This chapter reviews the contribution of theoretical investigations toward the understanding of at least a part of the interrelations and toward the explanation of at least a part of the existing biological data. Basic and more sophisticated approaches have been developed and applied to establish quantitative relationships between chemical structure and observed biological activity data. For a series of compounds that vary only in the substituents at one or more substitution sites, it is an obvious aim to assign to each substituent an individual contribution to the biological activity. Pattern recognition methods as well as linear and quadratic discriminant analyses were used by D. R. Henry and J. H. Block to classify 46 compounds as estrogens, androgens, progestins, corticoids, or cardiotonic steroids. All the structure and potency data of unusually configurated steroids can be expected to permit improvement in future modeling attempts.
