A designer drug is a structural or functional analog of a controlled substance that has been designed to mimic the pharmacological effects of the original drug, while avoiding classification as illegal and/or detection in standard drug tests. Designer drugs include psychoactive substances that have been designated by the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand, as new psychoactive substances (NPS) as well as analogs of performance-enhancing drugs such as designer steroids.
JWH-018 (1-pentyl-3-(1-naphthoyl)indole, NA-PIMO or AM-678) is an analgesic chemical from the naphthoylindole family that acts as a full agonist at both the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors, with some selectivity for CB2. It produces effects in animals similar to those of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a cannabinoid naturally present in cannabis, leading to its use in synthetic cannabis products that in some countries are sold legally as "incense blends".
Synthetic cannabinoids are a class of designer drug molecules that bind to the same receptors to which cannabinoids in cannabis plants attach. These novel psychoactive substances should not be confused with synthetic phytocannabinoids or synthetic endocannabinoids from which they are in many aspects distinct.
Methoxetamine, abbreviated as MXE, is a dissociative hallucinogen that has been sold as a designer drug. It differs from many dissociatives such as ketamine and phencyclidine (PCP) that were developed as pharmaceutical drugs for use as general anesthetics in that it was designed specifically to increase the antidepressant effects of ketamine.
AM-2201 is a recreational designer drug that acts as a potent but nonselective full agonist for the cannabinoid receptor. It is part of the AM series of cannabinoids discovered by Alexandros Makriyannis at Northeastern University.
UR-144 (TMCP-018, KM-X1, MN-001, YX-17) is a drug invented by Abbott Laboratories, that acts as a selective full agonist of the peripheral cannabinoid receptor CB2, but with much lower affinity for the psychoactive CB1 receptor.
A temporary class drug is a relatively new status for controlled drugs, which has been adopted in some jurisdictions, notably New Zealand and the United Kingdom, to attempt to bring newly synthesised designer drugs under legal control. The controlled drug legislation in these jurisdictions requires drug scheduling decisions to follow an evidence-based process, where the harms of the drug are assessed and reviewed so that an appropriate legal status can be assigned. Since many designer drugs sold in recent years have had little or no published research that could help inform such a decision, they have been widely sold as "legal highs", often for months, before sufficient evidence accumulates to justify placing them on the controlled drug schedules.
MAM-2201 is a drug that presumably acts as a potent agonist for the cannabinoid receptors. It had never previously been reported in the scientific or patent literature, and was first identified by laboratories in the Netherlands and Germany in June 2011 as an ingredient in synthetic cannabis smoking blends. Like RCS-4 and AB-001, MAM-2201 thus appears to be a novel compound invented by "research chemical" suppliers specifically for grey-market recreational use. Structurally, MAM-2201 is a hybrid of two known cannabinoid compounds JWH-122 and AM-2201, both of which had previously been used as active ingredients in synthetic cannabis blends before being banned in many countries.
XLR-11 (5"-fluoro-UR-144 or 5F-UR-144) is a drug that acts as a potent agonist for the cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 with EC50 values of 98 nM and 83 nM, respectively. It is a 3-(tetramethylcyclopropylmethanoyl)indole derivative related to compounds such as UR-144, A-796,260 and A-834,735, but it is not specifically listed in the patent or scientific literature alongside these other similar compounds, and appears to have not previously been made by Abbott Laboratories, despite falling within the claims of patent WO 2006/069196. XLR-11 was found to produce rapid, short-lived hypothermic effects in rats at doses of 3 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg, suggesting that it is of comparable potency to APICA and STS-135.
EAM-2201 is a drug that presumably acts as a potent agonist for the cannabinoid receptors. It had never previously been reported in the scientific or patent literature, and was first identified by laboratories in Japan in July 2012 as an ingredient in synthetic cannabis smoking blends Like the closely related MAM-2201 which had been first reported around a year earlier, EAM-2201 thus appears to be another novel compound invented by designer drug suppliers specifically for recreational use. Structurally, EAM-2201 is a hybrid of two known cannabinoid compounds JWH-210 and AM-2201, both of which had previously been used as active ingredients in synthetic cannabis blends before being banned in many countries.
PB-22 is a designer drug offered by online vendors as a cannabimimetic agent, and detected being sold in synthetic cannabis products in Japan in 2013. PB-22 represents a structurally unique synthetic cannabinoid chemotype, since it contains an ester linker at the indole 3-position, rather than the precedented ketone of JWH-018 and its analogs, or the amide of APICA and its analogs.
5F-PB-22 is a designer drug which acts as a cannabinoid agonist. The structure of 5F-PB-22 appears to have been designed with an understanding of structure–activity relationships within the indole class of cannabinoids.
3-(4-Hydroxymethylbenzoyl)-1-pentylindole is a synthetic cannabinoid. It is planned to be scheduled in Poland. It has been reported to the EMCDDA and Europol for the first time in 2010 under the terms of European Council Decision 2005/387/JHA of 10 May 2005 on the information exchange, risk-assessment and control of new psychoactive substances.
THJ-2201 is an indazole-based synthetic cannabinoid that presumably acts as a potent agonist of the CB1 receptor and has been sold online as a designer drug.
5F-AMB (also known as 5F-MMB-PINACA and 5F-AMB-PINACA) is an indazole-based synthetic cannabinoid from the indazole-3-carboxamide family, which has been used as an active ingredient in synthetic cannabis products. It was first identified in Japan in early 2014. Although only very little pharmacological information about 5F-AMB itself exists, its 4-cyanobutyl analogue (instead of 5-fluoropentyl) has been reported to be a potent agonist for the CB1 receptor (KI = 0.7 nM).
'MDMB-CHMICAa' is an indole-based synthetic cannabinoid that is a potent agonist of the CB1 receptor and has been sold online as a designer drug. While MDMB-CHMICA was initially sold under the name "MMB-CHMINACA", the compound corresponding to this code name (i.e. the isopropyl instead of t-butyl analogue of MDMB-CHMINACA) has been identified on the designer drug market in 2015 as AMB-CHMINACA.
NNE1 (also known as NNEI, MN-24 and AM-6527) is an indole-based synthetic cannabinoid, representing a molecular hybrid of APICA and JWH-018 that is an agonist for the cannabinoid receptors, with Ki values of 60.09 nM at CB1 and 45.298 nM at CB2 and EC50 values of 9.481 nM at CB1 and 1.008 nM at CB2. It was invented by Abbott and has a CB1 receptor pEC50 of 8.9 with around 80x selectivity over the related CB2 receptor. It is suspected that metabolic hydrolysis of the amide group of NNE1 may release 1-naphthylamine, a known carcinogen, given the known metabolic liberation (and presence as an impurity) of amantadine in the related compound APINACA, and NNE1 was banned in New Zealand in 2012 as a temporary class drug to stop it being used as an ingredient in then-legal synthetic cannabis products. NNE1 was subsequently found to be responsible for the death of a man in Japan in 2014.
Synthetic drugs refer to substances that are artificially modified from naturally-occurring drugs and are capable of exhibiting both therapeutic and psychoactive effects.
