Bath Salt-type Aminoketone Designer Drugs - Analytical and Synthetic Studies on Substituted Cathinones

The improvement sought in the project comes from the development of methods that allow forensic analysts to identify specific regioisomeric forms of substituted aminoketones among many isomers of mass spectral equivalence. The project provides methodology and analytical data necessary to discriminate between those regiosomeric and isobaric molecules having the same molecular weight and major fragments of equivalent mass, i.e., identical mass spectra. This work has anticipated the future appearance of some designer aminoketones and developed reference data and analytical reference standards for these compounds. Project results will increase the forensic drug chemistry knowledge base for aminoketone-type designer drugs. When compounds produce the same mass spectrum as the drug of interest, the identification by GC-MS must be based upon the ability of the chromatographic system to resolve these substances. This project included the synthesis and generation of complete analytic profiles and methods of differentiation for regioisomeric and isobaric substances related to the substituted aminoketones. The project has succeeded in generating proactive data for the forensic drug analyst and in describing a unified approach for specific drug identification based on structure correlated analytical properties. Mass spectra and product ion spectra are provided to show the results for the egoistic cyclic tertiary amines related to MDPV (3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone). 5 figures