Orphine

Uncommon card · No. 186397

Orphine is a class of synthetic opioid analgesic drugs, first developed in the 1960s and 1970s by Paul Janssen but categorised as their own distinct grouping by international drug control agencies, such as the EUDA and UNODC in 2025. These have emerged as designer drugs in recent years following increasing legislative controls on earlier families of synthetic opioids such as fentanyls and nitazenes. Orphines are not structural analogues of morphine (known as morphinans), despite the similar name. Initially, the term referred to compounds such as brorphine and bezitramide (which are related to fentanyls, but with the aniline nitrogen cyclised into a benzimidazole ring system), but subsequently a second group of compounds also came to be referred to under this epithet, namely the spiropiperidine derivatives typified by spirochlorphine (R6890), where the 4-position of the piperidine ring is fused to an N-phenyl imidazole ring through a shared carbon atom. Judged by molecular structure these...

Read on Wikipedia