Scientists with the Pacific Northwest National Lab conduct research on fentanyl analogs to help first responders better detect the dangerous illicit substances.
Courtesy of Andrea Starr / Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for pain relief. It’s up to 100 times stronger than morphine and has become the new black-market headliner, in part because of this potency. Fentanyl caused about 75,000 overdose deaths in 2023 in the United States, a number that nearly doubled over the previous five years.
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Lab are developing ways to get out ahead of illegal drug manufacturers in the hopes of stemming the flow of illicit fentanyl.
One of the challenges in curbing the illegal sales of fentanyl is that it’s not just one drug. There can be billions of versions (or analogs) with slightly different chemical structures. And it’s difficult to detect dangerous and illegal substances if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
By combining two different laboratory techniques, the PNNL scientists IDed a chemical signature common to all the fentanyl analogs they tested. Detecting this signature in a sample takes about an hour.
The new technique was also able to ID and detect another group of opioids called nitazenes, which are even more potent than fentanyl and are starting to show up on the illegal drug market.
The hope is to give law enforcement, prosecutors and first responders a new tool to help them identify new versions of the drugs as they hit the black market.
Find the papers in the Journal of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry here and here.
In these All Science Snapshots, “All Science. No Fiction.” creator Jes Burns features the most interesting, wondrous and hopeful science coming out of the Pacific Northwest.
And remember: Science builds on the science that came before. No one study tells the whole story.