Vaccines against Drug Abuse: Morphine-Hapten Design and Synthesis

Drugs of abuse are small molecules that typically do not induce an antibody response following the administration. To induce antibodies against these kind of molecules, structural changes have to be made to obtain so called “haptens”. The hapten must be coupled to immunogenic proteins, called “carriers”. These connected derivatives are typically drug-linker adducts, in which the linker has a terminal functional group (i.e., carboxylic acid or aliphatic amine) that forms a covalent bond with the carrier. The efficacy of these conjugate vaccines depends on several factors including hapten design, coupling strategy, hapten density, carrier protein selection, and vaccine adjuvant. Six nor-normorphine compounds were reacted with ethyl acrylate and ethyl bromoacetate. After the synthesis of the specific esters we hydrolyzed them to receive the N-carboxymethyl- and N-carboxyethyl-normorphine derivatives. The next step was the coupling phase with glycine ethyl ester, but the reactions didn’t work or the work-up process was not accomplishable. As an alternative route the normorphine-compounds were reacted with N-chloroacetyl glycine ethyl ester. These products were hydrolyzed in alkaline media and after the work-up process all of the derivatives contained the free carboxylic group of the glycine sidechain. All of the glycine ester and the glycine carboxylic acid derivatives are under biological tests.