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Chem. DIYBio DIYChem No Yes Yes Yes No Yes! Feh ?. Clear and present danger?. Source of technical innovation?. Financial driver?. Likely source of new threat?. How Nature does it. Likely a difficult step. Commercially available
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DIYBio DIYChem No Yes Yes Yes No Yes! Feh ? Clear and present danger? Source of technical innovation? Financial driver? Likely source of new threat?
Likely a difficult step Commercially available (vanillin derivative; Schedule I vanilla extract? Ha.) This is the clever step
$15 / kg as a commodity (pure vanillin) $5,000 / kg via retail (becomes > $100,000 kg on conversion)
Or one can go a different route These steps can possibly be condensed This is also rather clever A common method for methamphetamine production uses the Birch reduction (also called the "Nagai method"),[60] in which metallic lithium, commonly extracted from non-rechargeable lithium batteries, is substituted for difficult-to-find metallic sodium.
The elaboration to codeine is both straightforward and relatively long.
Maybe we don’t need all that elaboration What will this do? LiAlH4
Or, more to the point …. Further transformations? Cytochrome P450 Oxygen Mixture of hydroxyls One hydroxyl away from morphine
The real question is what could be made • Most semi-synthetic opioids, both of the morphine and codeine subgroups, are created by modifying one or more of the following: • Halogenating or making other modifications at positions 1 and/or 2 on the morphine carbon skeleton. • The methyl group which makes morphine into codeine can be removed or added back, or replaced with another functional group like ethyl and others to make codeine analogues of morphine-derived drugs and vice versa. Codeine analogues of morphine-based drugs often serve as prodrugs of the stronger drug, as in codeine & morphine, hydrocodone & hydromorphone, oxycodone & oxymorphone, nicocodeine & nicomorphine, dihydrocodeine and dihydromorphine, &c. &c. • Saturating, opening, or other changes to the bond betwixt positions 7 and 8, as well as adding, removing, or modifying functional groups to these positions; saturating, reducing, eliminating, or otherwise modifying the 7-8 bond and attaching a functional group at 14 yields hydromorphinol; the oxidation of the hydroxyl group to a carbonyl and changing the 7-8 bond to single from double changes codeine into oxycodone. • Attachment, removal or modification of functional groups to positions 3 and/or 6 (dihydrocodeine and related, hydrocodone, nicomorphine); in the case of moving the methyl functional group from position 3 to 6, codeine becomes heterocodeine which is 72 times stronger, and therefore six times stronger than morphine • Attachment of functional groups or other modification at position 14 (oxymorphone, oxycodone, naloxone) • Modifications at positions 2, 4, 5 or 17, usually along with other changes to the molecule elsewhere on the morphine skeleton. Often this is done with drugs produced by catalytic reduction, hydrogenation, oxidation, or the like, producing strong derivatives of morphine and codeine. 1 16 9 5 8 Incapacitants?
For example, this scheme seems to offer a unique route to modifications at position 14