FENTANYLHigh-Tech Methods to Stem the Flow of Fentanyl
Keeping up with illicit labs churning out new forms of fentanyl, nitazenes is the goal.
Fentanyl kills.
Make that: Fentanyls kill.
The threat is plural and potent, as illicit laboratories continually concoct new forms of the drug that sidestep today’s best detection techniques and protect drug dealers from prosecution. It’s a loophole that drug dealers are quick to step through—create new drugs faster than the law and health care providers can keep track of them.
While emergency responders are on the front lines daily in an epidemic that has seen hundreds of thousands of American lives lost, they have allies in chemists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
PNNL scientists are developing ways to detect and identify not only new, previously unseen forms of fentanyl but also newer and more dangerous synthetic opioids known as nitazenes.
The PNNL team has hurdled a key barrier in the detection of other forms of fentanyl, known as fentanyl analogs, and nitazenes. Most current detection methods rely on libraries of known compounds that have already been seen and reported. When responders encounter a substance suspected of being fentanyl, either the material is tested chemically or compared to known fentanyls in a database. If there’s a match, authorities know they’ve got a fentanyl compound.
But there are many potential fentanyl analogs; PNNL chemist Katherine Schultz has calculated that billions are possible. That’s fertile ground for chemists tinkering in illegal laboratories around the world. Once a known fentanyl form has been classified by authorities, unscrupulous chemists can quickly create a new, never-before-seen version that is not in any reference library. That makes identification of the compound difficult and ties the hands of law enforcement.
Detecting Drugs Before They’re on the Books
That’s where the PNNL technology comes in. Using a combination of mass spectrometry techniques, chemists have discovered a chemical characteristic indicative of all fentanyls tested to date. The team also discovered additional chemical traits that reveal the specific form of every fentanyl tested.
Whether the substance has been found on the streets or not—whether it’s in the reference book or not—the team can tell whether a substance is or is not fentanyl.
Recently, the team extended its work to nitazenes, a lesser-known but even more potent class of illegal drugs, and have identified tell-tale chemical signals of those drugs.
The PNNL team published its work earlier this year in a pair of publications in the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry.
