source:
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-bioengineers-brewing-opioid-painkillers-opium.html

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this...

Opiate addiction is already a bad enough problem. I wonder what kind of modified withdrawal these pain pills will bring? I know synthetic opioids like methadone and fentanyl have extended withdrawal periods than that of natural opiates. Methadone withdrawal can actually cause death.

It sounds as if the host yeast is taken over by that what's introduced via science. SO basically it seems it would be the same exact thing as the real thing, semi-synthesized, more customized I guess would be the correct thing, so it may not have any modified addictive properties or withdrawal.

It just seems like such a dangerous thing to mess with. It's already an insanely powerful drug, and can be produced easily by simply growing flowers. I don't understand what exactly is so bad about having to farm...I suppose that would cut down on cost, and it could prevent the illegal growing of poppies for illicit drugs for good by making it totally illegal to grow somniferum poppies of any kind, anywhere. But this would be the total banning of a plant in order to stop heroin production.

If this were to occur, what would stop them from doing this to all medicines and drugs that are created using plants. Could this mean that if they can do this using the poppy, that it could be used for any plant? If that is true, they could honestly ban certain plants forever, causing an extinction of that plant in it's true form, but still being able to harvest the necessities from said plant.

It may sound paranoid, but it seems they stop at nothing these days to get certain things under total governmental control.

I remember reading a number of months ago that they had identified a key enzyme in that opiate biosynthesis pathway, looks like they put it to use. I have no problem really with the bioengineering aspect - in fact, a lot of our other medicines are made using transfected organisms such as yeast and E.coli. I think a large leap in this process is the fact that as you mentioned, this will reduce political strife (hopefully) and allows more mass production. Though one might argue the political strife surrounding somniferum has originated out of its forced illegality.

On a side note regarding government control: Some of these transgenic procedures can be performed at home by a 'kitchen bioengineer' if one has the equipment. I'm not sure how public this new opiate gene sequence is, but I just wanted to point out that things like transgenic and recombinant organism work isn't ALL under the control of Big Bro.

Hopefully it won't be too easy because if I can make oxycodone in my kitchen I might get myself into some trouble!

so what's next? Specially engineered yeast producing psilocybin, mescaline, lsd?

probably not lsd, but the other two are possible.


this won't replace poppy production.
the majority of opium will still come from Asia, for the same reason biofuels won't replace gasoline
(there are already old industries heavily invested in it).

Grrrr, I definitely had this idea last year, but my research adviser told me to forget it.

I wonder how long it will take for some of those opioid-producing yeast cultures to 'escape' onto the black market.

It would be a real middle finger to the DEA (and the entire FedGov, really) if anyone who wanted to get a fix could just grow vats of stuff in their basement, and then do a simple extraction for the alkaloids.

This could also be huge for pain patients who can't afford to pay for scripts year after year. Obviously there would have to be some educating about how to extract a safe, consistent dose, but as we on The Nexus have shown, that's totally doable.

Blessings
~ND

I have to take Oxycodone for chronic severe pain. Works great except I only get enough to be able to knock the pain down a couple notches. Basically, I can pick what four hours a day I want to be relatively pain-free.

I rotate Kratom and Oxy to keep my tolerance down. I have been seriously thinking about growing some opium poppies to make my own pain meds. If it was not for the wonderful wife and kids I would be in Cambodia doing my own pain management. You can get Morphine and legal heroin OTC there.

That is a fairly dated article but I haven't seen any really new information on the subject though there are newer reports. The University of Toronto and other schools have been doing parallel work in this field. I don't really buy the idea that this will replace traditional propagation and processing. The diversion argument is suspect as well since it is incredible easy for any property owner to quietly grow their own poppies perfectly legally in the US, still.

I see this as something that will be nearly impossible to keep under tight regulation, just as the poppies themselves are. Sooner or later people, particularly chronic pain sufferers, will be brewing their own opiate medicines. It's high time that adults took their own well being and choice back from the medical industry. It's likely that if one can brew ones own basic opiates there will be no market for super potent analogues like fentanyl and black market heroin will probably be far less prevalent as well. Maybe this is a step on the way to the end of the war on drugs?

Newer articles:

Yeast-Based Opioid Production Completed
Researchers fully engineer a biochemical pathway that turns a sugar into an opioid in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

How to create opioids for the masses

\As a scientist and environmentalist, I applaud this team for this breakthrough achievement, and hope that it doesn't follow the fate of Frankenstein's Adam.

P. Somniferum is a labor-intensive crop with high costs of cultivation and refinement (morphinans are very sensitive and degrade easily, and thus must be extracted & purified using advanced and expensive chemical methodologies) notorious for poor yields of morphinan alkaloids & semisynthetic derivatives thereof (e.g. morphine, oxycodone, heroin, etc.), the most common family of opioid-ergic drugs used in the entire world, and thus must be grown on large tracts of land with hefty investments and resource consumption. Ultimately, P. Somniferum cultivation will rapidly become an unsustainable practice of producing enough opioids in order to meet global demand.


In otto Snow's book, Oxy, he notes that the impressive amount of resources needed to sustain ever-increasing demand from the Medical industry. Although specific strains of poppies have been engineered to produce higher content of X morphinan via playing with the genes responsible for dictating the enzymes needed for their biosynthesis at a crucial step (e.g. Thebaine or Morphine), low yields endemic to P. Somniferum and increasing demand may pose a massive threat to global demand for these medicines.

A significant amount of these prescribed opioids (with well over half of all prescriptions being written for patients with pre-existing psychiatric illnesses), commonly prescribed in the practice of chronic pain management--an illness which is rising at a breakneck speed alongside a rapidly escalating rate of opioid abuse, addiction and fatal overdoses.

A semi-synthetic derivative of Thebaine (morphinan endemic to P. Somniferum from which most semisynthetic morphinans, such as oxycodone and heroin, are derived from), buprenorphine is commonly prescribed to this ever-expanding armada of opiate addicts, many of whom began their addiction via abuse of prescription opioids prescribed to others. Due to increased stigma in Medical practice against prescribing opioids, alongside increasing black market prices for these prescription opioids, an ever-expanding armada of addicts have turned to street heroin to afford their 'fix'.

Methadone use for opioid addiction maintenance therapy is decreasing whilst buprenorphine preparation prescriptions are increasing as pharmaceutical drug reps persuade doctors to use novel formulations of the drug which are protected under patent law, and thus much more profitable. Kratom use for opioid addiction is relatively unheard of among many addicts, and can pose risks in patients with a broad spectrum of illnesses (e.g. hep C, compromised hepatic function, renal failure, allergies, etc.). This rise in the rate of patients on buprenorphine therapy further stresses demand for Morphinans, further stressing demand for P. Somniferum cultivation.


By using microorganisms to manufacture morphinan alkaloids, this ecological crisis may be averted. Manipulating the genomes of organisms with short life cycles to produce these alkaloids is environmentally friendly, and is the most logical step IMO to solving this crisis. Although it certainly isn't a cure for the rapidly growing demand for morphinan opioid-ergics, it may serve as a means of treating the looming ecological and economic crises surrounding the increased demand for P. Somniferum cultivation for pharmaceutical opioids.