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Designer drugs: a medicinal chemistry perspective
F Ivy Carroll1, Anita H Lewin, S Wayne Mascarella
1Center for Organic and Medicinal Chemistry, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709-2194, USA. fic@rti.org
Abstract:
There are numerous medicinal chemistry reports in the literature describing the pharmacological properties of thousands of narcotics, stimulants, hallucinogens, sedative-hypnotic drugs, cannabinoids, and other psychoactive substances as well as synthetic methods for their preparations. This information, while essential for the advancement of science, has been used by clandestine chemists to manufacture and market an endless variety of analogs of so-called designer drugs. In this review, we describe how clandestine chemists used the principles of medicinal chemistry to design molecules, referred to as designer drugs, that elicit the effects of opioids, amphetamine and analogs, cannabinoids, and phencyclidine analogs while circumventing the law.
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