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Benzylamine Opioids

Fertile

Bluelighter
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Although it's far from accurate, older literature often quotes 'the morphine rule' which is:

-Aromatic system
-Quaternary Carbon
-2 carbon chain
-Tertiary amine

They even added 'the fentanyl modification' to get around the unpalatable fact that whole new classes were turning up that didn't follow 'the rules'. But I've also noted examples in which the ⭕ lone-pairs and the N: lone-pair are swapped spacially. It's interesting and MANY classes of opioid follow this alternative set of rules. People wondering about the ciramadol analogue in which the meta phenol is swapped for a para -Cl should note that I found it in Reaxys. I couldn't found the reference other than to say that it's as potent as ciramadol BUT it's a full agonist.

Now a question for you all - note that BDPC requires that p-Br (or a p--Me which I BET is going to be much more euphoric due to altered pharmokinetics). But it's interesting that the difference in atomic radius of -Br & -CH3 are not the same.... a -CF3 would be MUCH closer. Also, if you swap the p-Br (or p-CH3) for a m-OH, you end up with an antagonist (work from Dan Lednicer) and so I suspect that the propanamide derivatives, the only potent ones having a m-OH so are antagonists will likewise become full agonists if a p-Br/p-Cl/p-CH3/p-CF3 or similar (you would need to chectk them all because no calculation I know of can help decide the most active.

For those who haven't read it, it's IMPOSSIBLE to confer antagonist properties on an opioid that does not possess a phenol or bioisostere. What bioisostere? Well a carboxamide is the best known example. Swap the 3-OH of morphine for a -CONH2 and it's only 1/2 the potency but the duration is 12 hours which I sense might be of use in the design of opioids.
I would like to thank Skorpio for all of the papers he has obtained for me - if this was a publication, I certainly wouldn't refer to him as 'et al'. Also thankyou for Fast & Bulbous for correcting my mistakes and having no end of tolerance towards my stupidity.


Also, for what it's worth, the phenylpropanamide opioid overlaying the MOR. Now WHY should a para substitution alter affinity? Well, the days of lock-and-key have gone, now science believes that a drug allows the receptor to adopt a lower energy state and that the active conformation of a drug might be quite unexpected.


I'm too old - my education is from the 80s & 90s so I'm hoping younger BL chemists can chip in and provide further insights. So many unanswered questions.
 
I tried Samidorphan (with the phenol switched with an Ar-(C=O)-NH2), and it is a completely dysphoric opioid antagonist.
 
I tried Samidorphan (with the phenol switched with an Ar-(C=O)-NH2), and it is a completely dysphoric opioid antagonist.

Well the phenol has been swapped for a carboxamide.... but with an n-methylcyclopropyl, it was going to be a partial agonist at best.

As I've said, it isn't possible to produce antagonist properties without phenol or bioisostere. How was duration.

I'm most interested by the pohenylpropanamide and C8813. What is most annoying is that nowhere is the chirality of the methylamine moiety. But the N: and the =O: overlay perfectly as their is a p-Br (or other (pseudo)halogen). It's not a simple synthesis, sadly, but it would explain an awful lot.

People with the appropriate software can have some fun trying to make picenadol (the agonist isomer) overlay ketobemidone. I spend some time with Reaxys and found no examples with anything but N-methyl as agonists. I couldn't get the 2 related compounds to overlay BUT I know ChemOffice often does a bad job calculating minimum-energy conformations. It's my theory that like picenadol the 3-methy; derivative of ketobemidone is an agonist BUT I suggest that when it was being tested (circa 1946), nobody ever tried to separate the 4 enthiomers. Not that it's ever going to be worth the effort of producing.... but it would add to the sum total of knowledge.
 
BTW the fact that the dimethylamine of the ciramadol analogue is (S) suggests two possible ideas:

-The methylamine of the phenylpropanamide class is also likely to be (S)
-The reason that the phenylpropanamides with a meta -OH might display both agonist and antagonist properties because it's actually a racemic mixcure of 2(S) & 2(R).

This strongly suggests that their is an alternative to 'the morphine rule' which I guess we can term 'The BDPC rule'.

-Aromatic system
-(S) positively ionisable function connected to the benzylic carbon
-3 carbon chain
-function with lone-pairs

I might add that 3D QSAR with these as training-sets would be of great value.
 
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yeah the morphine rule is a bit outdated since many new scaffolds have turned up, this class of benzylamine opioids is really big come to think of it.
 
yeah the morphine rule is a bit outdated since many new scaffolds have turned up, this class of benzylamine opioids is really big come to think of it.

Finding a rigid opioid with the alternate rules would be vital in tightening up the rules AND would be ideal for a training set. If people find more, add them. 20 will do, but for a good training-set, 30 or even 40 is better.
 
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