It will be interesting to read any GABA labs patents BECAUSE I sent the QSAR for both 1,4-benzodiazepines and 1,5-benzodiazepines that are a5 selective... and Nutt replied to my E-mails. So IF they attempt to patent any of the compounds I designed, I actually have proof that they are not novel (so cannot be patented.
I've mentioned pyeyzolam which was my first design and GABA labs (under it's previous name 'Alcorette') paid me for the rights (and I have copies of said sale) BUT it only covers 3 specific compounds i.e.
Pyeyzolam - a5-selective benzo that emulates 'drunk' but cannot emulate '2 glasses of wine' i.e. I discovered the receptor that high doses of ethanol bind to.
Pynazolam - a benzo that is actually a selective serotonin releaser which emulated the relaxation and euphoria ethanol produces.
Pynazolam - which the above were both made from.
But I later figured out that lower doses of alcohol preferentially bind to the a5b2y2 receptor and sent Nutt the design for Pyeybazam which has been made and tested and DOES emulate lower doses of ethanol.
So to emulate alcohol from 1 glass of wine to a bottle of vodka actually required 2 different compounds, specifically a 3:1 mixture of Pyeybazam

yeyzolam. Now, getting a marketing licence when their are 2 actives is just HUGELY costly.
So what did I do next? I found a compound that acted at both the a5b1y2 AND a5b2y2 GABA receptors. Now THAT they do not have. It took the team a fair old while to figure out how to produce an asymmetrical dimer (so technically not a dimer but chemists will know what I mean). It required an unusual synthetic technique and even then the product wasn't pure and required biocatalytic resolution (the impurities cannot be removed using HPLC or any other purely chemical technique).
I should add we didn't DISCOVER this method or resolving mixtures but knowing the appropriate biocatalyst and conditions resulted in a LOT of trial end error. But if people wish to see pyeyzolam, pynazolam and pyeybazam, here they are:
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So the only things I'm not showing is the single chiral compound that is a5b1y2/a5b2y2 selective and which about 5mg equals 1 UK unit of alcohol.
Of course it's quite possible that GABA Labs are working with an entirely new scaffold. The most obvious one to me is those found in Kava, specifically kavain, dihydrokavain and methysticin although out limited studies showed that the natural compounds are VERY costly to extract so they would have to produce them synthetically and the law is much laxer on natural compounds as compared to synthetics. We did briefly think that it's impossible to tell if a given compound was produced by a plant or by synthesis but that IS dubious legal ground and if anyone remembers tryptophan being banned. The Chinese were CLAIMING to have extracted it from plants but were in fact making it synthetically and as it turned out, their was an impurity that turned out to be chronically toxic.. so we gave up on that one.