I'm back fellow /sci/entists!
Anyway, I found a paper from the 1960s that uses a hydrobromination and elimination reaction on Dihydroandrostenedione which seems promising if adapted to DHT, of course this method would require purification and lab techniques a beyond the ability of the average person, but it technically doesn't use anything you couldn't easily get a hold of.
A hypothetical example would be: To make a solution of 257mg of DHT (available from supplement stores) in 2.5ml of glacial acetic acid and add 0.083ml of 0.14N HBr/AcOH, this solution would then be purged with inert gas and to it added 149mg of bromine in 1.5ml of glacial acetic acid dropwise over 15mins. This mix would then be stirred for a further 5mins and to it added 400mg of sodium acetate followed by 10ml of water to quench the reaction. The reaction would then be extracted w/ 30ml of toluene, which would need to then be back extracted by 10ml of water, saturated brine, water, KHCO3, and water again, before being dried over MgSO4 and the solvent evaporated.
This residue would then be dried down and dissolved in 4ml of dry DMF along with 71mg of LiCl, the mixture would then be refluxed under an inert atmosphere at 100C for 2h, diluted w/ 20ml water, extracted w/ 20x3ml EtOAc, and back extracted w/ 10ml H2O, dried over MgSO4 and chromatographed over Silica using an unknown solvent system. (Likely hexane/ether) Analysis would need to be done via TLC and some form of spectroscopy and yield would probably sit around 50%.
Side products would be halogenated derivatives, with the main reason for failiure being substitution of the alcohol on the cyclopentyl moiety with a bromine molecule which might be fixable by esterification before the reaction? (continuing in another post)
Provided it was legal, this would make a fun experiment for a chemist to try at home. (But basically poison to actually consume)
