• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio

Doxicopamine - The Overlooked Example of a Benzylamine Opioid.

4DQSAR

Bluelighter
Joined
Feb 3, 2025
Messages
5,523
US patent 3905987 covers a number of homologues of doxicopamine. ChemOffice reveals that the aromatic ring, amine and oxygen-containing function all overlay those of US3928626A which covers ciramadol. Both are chiral but only the latter was considered as a medicine containing one enantiomer. But the patent shows that in both cases, it's the same enantiomer that is responsible for the activity.

I think it's important to note that if the aromatic is a meta pyridine, that's a bioisostere of a meta phenol as evidenced by analogues of fentanyl and phenapromide containing a meta pyridine in place of a benzene being mixed agonists.

With all such research, we are limited by what pharmacutical companies choose to make public. The 3-phenyl-3-3-amino propanamide class of ligand also overlays AND overlays fentanyl. The question raised is that while most people have at least heard of BDPC, most didn't seem to note that replacing that para bromo benzene with a meta phenol resulted in a robust antagonist.

Sadly Dan's no longer around to ask but from what I know, the simpler compounds including what someone has decided to name dimetadine were essentially the result of teasing apart the various activites of PCP analogues which were known to act on the opiate receptors. I believe he built Dreiding models of each one and was able to use the data gathered from studying the simpler compounds and work out that although seemingly unrelated to fentanyl, BDPC overlays it perfectly. Obviously almost none of this was ever made public but it wasn't actually none of the above were the first benylamine opioids. That accolade goes to:

Analgetic activity of some δ-amino ketones and their derivatives
https://sci-hub.st/10.1021/jm00320a007

And is revisited by:

Design, Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of 3-amino-3-Phenyl Propanamide Derivatives

Of the latter, the only thing I can add with a certain degree of certainty is that once again, that chiral amine once again follows those doxicopamine analogues and ciramadol. Sadly, due to changes in UK law it was not possible to futher investigate but it's worth noting that if you feed in fentanyl and example 4a, the two overlay in their minimum-energy conformation.

Of course it was tempting to see if adding a benzylic hydroxyl to the B-ring, but I believe Dan tried adding methyl side-chains to BDPC where the lipophilic pocket of 3MF would be but as far as I know either it was never tested or did not work.

More generally I'm just more interested in the benzylamine opioids. Other examples exist (lefetamine and the derivatives developed Dainippon Pharmaceutical Co. in the 70s for example) and it's interesting to note that Dan considered cebranopadol to be the 'spiritual successor' to his work - when I sent him the papers he was really happy and spend a full week reviewing it all. In that case side-chains (including allyl as seen in allylprodine) were also tested and abandoned. So I think it reasonable to suggest it's 'case closed' in terms of alkyl side-chains akin to 3MF.

Although the 'morphine rule' was abandoned after the inventors had to first add 'the fentanyl modification' and when more arrived realized that the exceptions outweighted the rule, it does appear that researchers probably just look at what's out there and benzylamine opioids being quite rare makes them an unattractive class of lead compound but as you can see, they have been known of for over sixty years so it isn't really novel, more overlooked.
 
Last edited:
BTW Totally forgot that metofoline and all of it's derivatives (some many times the analgesic potency of morphine) are also examples - in those cases the only detail is that the benzylamine moiety is within a tetrahydroisoquinoline ring. But once again, especially when one overlays those two classes, it becomes clear that they overlay PEPAP and phenoperidine respectively.

Tetrahydroquinoline Derivatives (Hoffman Le-Roche 1962)
US 3067203

1-Beta-Arylthioethyltetrahydroisoquinolines (Bristol-Myers 1968)
US3378561A

Stereoisomerism is the same as that of the open benzylamine opioids.

I'm just keen to see if anyone can spot more as if enough exist, it's possible to build a training-set which by definition will NOT match that of other opioids and offer a second set of key moieties and their relative spatial positions.
 
Very weak μ-opioid agonist. Dosage is 50 times weaker than morphine or 4 times weaker than pethidine.


Read the patent - being chiral and one being active 'tother not is a step in the right direction AND a meta pyridyl moiety isn't optimal and as I noted, tends to produce mixed agonists.

Still not that potent, but it's actually a good thing for a training-set. You need the range from weak to strong so weight can be assigned to the various key moieties and their relative spacial positions.

ChemOffice shows the active isomer to overlay ciramaol with aromatic N lone-pair and O-lone-pairs overlaying.

But as we know, when Janssen developed phenoperidine, he began with pethidine and worked out that a second aromatic ring increased potency hugely. The tetrahydroisoquilones overlay PEPAP and the more potent derivatives that arrived a decade later increased chain-length and were an order of magnitude more potent like phenoperidine... Why an S(O) moiety? Because a sulfinyl is chiral...
 
US Patent 3378561A 1-beta-arylthioethyltetrahydro-isoquinolines

BTW this is the extension to the metofoline class. Which is why I likened metofoline itself to PEPAP and this extenstion being akin to phenoperidine. But I'm also prepared to accept that:

US Patent 3238212 1-substituted-1-phenyl(or substituted phenyl)-2-[2-methyl-6, 7-substituted-1, 2, 3, 4-tetrahydroisoquinolinyl-(1)] ethanes

Also has the benzylic hydroxyl moiety. Why would later researchers include a thienyl? I suspect because they had reasonable grounds to think that inclusion of that S(O) would ensure no arguments over patent protection. Especially in light of the earlier researchers also obtaining:

US Patent 3067203 1-PHENYLALKYL-1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-0CTAHYDROQUINOLINES

Why was potency compared to codeine in both classes? Almost certainly because just as Bentley was asked to find a cheaper alternative to codeine, so were these researchers. Before Tazmanian Alkaloids engineered poppies that containined nothing but codeine, almost all of the codeine used medically was actually semisynthetic - it was made from morphine and the legal position of morphine pushed up the prices of codeine, so for around a decade, a few different research groups were tasked with finding something that WAS an opioid but wouldn't be potent enough to end up in schedule 2 thus avoiding all of those extra costs the extra security and book-keeping enjoined.
 
Last edited:

Missed two important details. One is that American Home Products had previously patented ciramadol derivatives as antagonists and that although the O lone-pairs overlay doxicopamine, the bare -OH in ciramadol is a HBD so can interact with the amine and so the active conformation differs.

Long ago I spent a good week trying to work out what a pair of enantiomers which had the same MOR affinity could be classed as a 'partial agonist'. While I'm uncertain the researchers got to the heart of the matter, they were able to test the efficacy of each and one was more active than the other.

The why was something to do with how the side-chain overlaid the piperidine ring and how that altered the minimum-energy conformation of the meta phenol A-ring. But we simply don't have enough examples to really test their findings.

I did look at the synthesis of cis 3-methyl ketobemidone but whatever route is used, it's impossible not to end up with all four isomers and even IF it were more potent, the increased synthetic complexity would make it a non-facile target.

Typically I remembered all of this at 3AM but I'm proud of myself - I didn't get out of bed and find the papers there and then.
 
Top