Microbial biotransformation: recent developments on steroid drugs.

About 300 of steroid drugs have been identified since the research and development to steroid drugs was triggered in 1950's. Although much progress in microbial biotransformation on steroid drugs is well-achieved, many efforts are ongoing in order to improve the efficiency of steroidal drug production as well as to degrade their derivatives. In this work an overview of recent and important findings related to patents and various microbial biotransformations of steroidal compounds including dehydrogenation/reduction, hydroxylation, esterification, methylation, halogenation and methoxylation is presented. Both metabolic pathway and genetic manipulation and screening for new strains capable of metabolizing/transforming steroid drugs, as the powerful endocrine disruptors, are introduced since they are serious environmental contaminants.