Shortage of Pure Drug Samples Hampers 'Legal High' Work

[slimvictor]

Identification of suspect substances depends on reference materials that are in short supply

By Daniel Cressey and Nature magazine | August 31, 2011


Attempts to understand and control new synthetic recreational drugs are being hindered by analysis laboratories' inability to obtain pure samples of the compounds, experts say.

The growing problem of synthetic drugs — which include mimics of cannabis and amphetamine — came to the fore in the United Kingdom last year as politicians rushed to ban mephedrone, which had been linked in the media to several deaths. Mephedrone and several related compounds, known collectively as cathinones, are now controlled substances in the United Kingdom and in many other countries. But new drugs are already appearing that circumvent these bans.

In order to determine what a substance actually is, analytical chemists need to compare it with a pure version of what they think it might be, using techniques such as gas-column mass spectrometry (GCMS). But Robert Lantz and Oliver Sutcliffe told reporters at the American Chemical Society meeting in Denver, Colorado, that these 'reference standards' are hard to come by for emerging synthetic drugs.



cont at
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shortage-of-pure-drug-samples

 

[slimvictor]

"If you're doing GCMS on a sample and it almost matches mephedrone, well maybe it's butylone," said Lantz. "A good analytical chemist would be able to say 'yes, this is a slight variation' as opposed to a button pusher who would simply say 'it doesn't match anything in my library'."

I wonder how many "good analytical chemists" are working on this, as opposed to "button pushers".
I assume that most people working on this are federal employees, which means they are likely button pushers.

 

[skillet]

Sutcliffe's group at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences in Glasgow, UK, has been working on methods for synthesizing and analysing pure cathinones. However, the team does not have a licence to distribute the compounds to other laboratories. Major chemical suppliers are also not permitted supply the drugs. A lack of reference standards can have serious repercussions for criminal cases.

Wow, that sounds like cutting edge work. So basically the law prohibits them from using the law to bust people, so fuck em.

 

[23536]

I don't get it. A mass spec would easily distinguish between mephedrone and butylone, which have different formula masses (that's the whole point of the mass spec).

Aren't assays of pure samples published? I've seen them in Microgram.

 

[skillet]

Yeah, but to say what it is definitively the retention time of the sample peak has to match with a reference. The mass on it's own doesn't tell you anything.

 

[23536]

Yeah, but to say what it is definitively the retention time of the sample peak has to match with a reference. The mass on it's own doesn't tell you anything.

help me out with a concept (I've never done gas chromatography): once this has been done with one pure substance somewhere in the world, the values obtained can serve as a reference everywhere and forever, right? Or do you need to have a pure sample on hand every time you run the test?

 

[skillet]

The retention time will be different on every machine it's run on, due to different columns, flow rates and stuff. You probably don't have to run the reference every time you want to run a sample, but if you change something on the machine that could affect the retention time you'd need to re-run the reference.

The fragmentation pattern should be similar on different machines, as long as the same ionisation method is used, for that you can get libraries and search for the spectra that most closely match that of your sample.