African entheogens containing actives

[tagonist]

I am so glad some money from the Army is going to research in opiates and not war

I didn't find this research paper on here, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

Drug Development and Conservation of Biodiversity in West and Central Africa: Performance of Neurochemical and Radio Receptor Assays of Plant Extracts Drug Discovery for the Central Nervous System

Simon Efange, Ph.D.
Deborah C. Mash, Ph.D.

The thrust of the CNS assay panel was to identify plant extracts that display moderate to high affinity for selected molecular targets. Target selection was based identifying active plant extracts that would be useful for one or more neuropsyschiatric disorders. We completed a screen for 102 samples belonging to 43 plants. 41 showed activity at one or more CNS targets. Phytochemical studies have been initiated on several active extracts. A total of 12 plants samples which have tested positive for antiplasmodial activity were collected in bulk quantities for detailed phytochemical investigations into antimalarial and trypanocidal activity.

I hope that someone here can help me decipher the result graph. They say values in bold are IC50 values, yet with the control value used for testing for mu receptor activity, they used an agonist. Wouldn't this mean it should be EC50? Anyways, I heard someone has some extract of one of the plants listed that is active at DAT and mu receptors en route from a source in the old motherland herself! Hopefully they report back!

well it seems I cannot upload the file as it is too big...

here it is:
hxxp://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA474982&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

[jacky]

ah, interesting....

notice that Deb. Mash is one of the PHD scientists....she is an ibogaine researcher in the USA....one of the few doing legal research
(though there are a small group of people undoubtedly doing personal research that is unapproved)

I would like to see more...but I could find any full text things to load.

thanks for the info

[tagonist]

What are your thoughts on the fact that they list IC50, yet used the measurement of an agonist as the control number (in µ receptor column)? Perhaps the values in bold text could be either agonistic or antagonistic in nature.

[HandMeSomeOpiates]

what does the µ stand for?

[DCBA]

i think its the mu opioid receptor type.

[Shadowsblaze]

You guys are beyond me with your understanding but I did catch an interesting article in a local paper of the development of a pain killer from the oceans cone snail that they believe will be non addictive. Just a little tidbit that you biology nerds might be aware of already. That is all lol.

[tagonist]

I hate to bring up an old thread, however I found my 2 year old tincture of pittosporum viridiflorum (cheesewood) and remembered the thread. The extract on the posted article claims to have high affinity for mu receptors, I wonder if this old tincture would still be good?

Foliage of this stuff is starting to pop up on some botanical websites.

[TheTalkingAsshole]

interesting stuff, especially since its the US military investigating natural substances for "neuropsychiatric disorders"