Type

Units

Status

Start Date

End Date

Financing

Brief description/objective

Consumption of so-called novel psychoactive substances (e.g. “synthetic opioids” and “synthetic cannabinoids”) is a growing global health threat. Due to the rapid market dynamics of the new drugs of abuse market current analytical methods cannot keep up and detection of an uptake of these compounds remains challenging, time-consuming and expensive. Consequently, novel analytical approaches are necessary to fill the gap and prevent that intoxications and deaths due to these compounds go undetected. The here presented project aims at the development of a new approach for the detection of drug uptake in biological samples. Following a new concept by choosing the binding at the dedicated receptor of e.g. synthetic cannabinoids (CB1) rather than analyzing for the compound itself as the analytical target. This opens the opportunity to have a chemical-structure independent and thus futureproof screening method for e.g. clinical and forensic laboratories available.