ESPD 50

Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs

ESPD 50
SPEAKERS

Kenneth Alper

Kenneth Alper

Kenneth Alper

Associate Professor

The Ibogaine Project: Urban ethnomedicine for opioid use disorder.

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“Ibogaine may be viewed as a project of urban ethnomedicine that began in a native context of use– heroin users in Brooklyn New York and Rotterdam, and has subsequently expanded as the for more than two decades with regard to numerical scale and geographic extent.”

The Ibogaine Project: Urban ethnomedicine for opioid use disorder.

“With a mechanism of action is unknown and apparently novel, ibogaine provides a paradigm for investigation of the neurobiology of addiction and a prototype for the development of fundamentally innovative pharmacotherapy.”

Transcript abstract

Ibogaine may be viewed as a project of urban ethnomedicine that began in a native context of use– heroin users in Brooklyn New York and Rotterdam, and has subsequently expanded as the for more than two decades with regard to numerical scale and geographic extent. With a mechanism of action is unknown and apparently novel, ibogaine provides a paradigm for investigation of the neurobiology of addiction and a prototype for the development of fundamentally innovative pharmacotherapy. Ibogaine is an affirmative example of the importance and significance of ethnopharmacology for innovation in drug discovery. Evidence regarding structure-function relationships indicates that the ibogamine ring system that defines the iboga class of monoterpene indole alkaloids may be accurately regarded as a “privileged scaffold”, a structure of pharmacological significance on which systematic substitutions can be utilized to modulate toxic and therapeutic effects.