The so-called pharmacoterrorism consists of the use of drugs with the aim of turning terrorists into more powerful and efficient executors of crimes. A brain-hijacking weapon whose effects are used for the benefit of terror. How? Stimulants such as phenetylline, also known as Captagon , increase combat capacity thanks to their psychoactive effects. In addition, the feeling of fear diminishes , which makes them almost irrational machines ready to spread terror.
The use of this synthetic psychoactive stimulant, Captagon, has been linked to Syrian civil war fighters and Islamic State terrorists. Its mechanism of action is highly complex. One of its ingredients is an amphetamine, but, in addition, it binds with other stimulants, giving rise to a diverse cocktail that is released in the central nervous system.
But now, a team of scientists has managed to unravel the chemical complexity of this substance, already known as the drug of the jihadists. And, more importantly, they have managed to develop an effective compound to mitigate its effects.
Although scientists were aware that the psychoactive properties of phenetylline differ from those of other synthetic stimulants, the chemical complexity manifested in the intake of this drug has hampered efforts to identify, without any doubt, the specific species responsible for it. these effects.
Using a new approach to the vaccine in mice, a team led by Kim Janda discovered the mechanism of action of phenetylline. It is caused by an interaction between two different metabolites that are released when the drug is ingested.
The study develops a “dissection by vaccination” that they have called DISSECTIV and shows how this drug works: Captagon’s diverse fast-onset psychoactive properties are facilitated by the combination of theophylline and amphetamine. “Our results demonstrate that vaccination against a single chemical species within a mixture of several components can be used to discover the properties that arise from polypharmacological activity “, they explain in the text of the research, published by the journal Nature.
Additionally, scientists anticipate that DISSECTIV will be used to expose unidentified active chemical species and to resolve pharmacodynamic interactions within other chemically complex systems, such as those found in counterfeit or illegal drugs, post-metabolic tissue samples, and natural product extracts.
The vaccination approach can be used to understand the mechanisms by which other complex drugs impart their psychoactive effects.
Drug vaccines hold great promise in preventing more and more people from falling into substance dependence, but it raises loopholes that need to be questioned . For a person with dependency, there is not only detoxification, but also detoxification, as stated in a talk during the Naukas Bilbao event in January 2017 by Oihan Iturbide, with training in Chemical Biology and specializing in scientific, medical and environmental communication ,: “It has been shown that during the ritual of administration of a drug, before it is consumed, the dopamine receptors of a person with drug addiction are already activated”.
References:
Cody J. Wenthur, Bin Zhou & Kim D. Janda. Vaccine-driven pharmacodynamic dissection and mitigation of fenethylline psychoactivity. Nature (2017) doi: 10.1038 / nature23464.
