U-47700 is an opioid analgesic drug developed by a team at Upjohn in the 1970s which has around 7.5 times the potency of morphine in animal models.
Physical Sample of U-47700
U-47700 is a structural isomer of the earlier opioid AH-7921 and the result of a great deal of work elucidating the quantitative structure–activity relationship of the scaffold. Upjohn looked for the key moieties which gave the greatest activity and posted over a dozen patents on related compounds, each optimizing one moiety until they discovered that U-47700 was the most active.
U-47700 became the lead compound of selective kappa-opioid receptor ligands such as U-50488, U-51754 (containing a single methylene spacer difference) and U-69,593, which share very similar structures. Although not used medically, the selective kappa ligands are used in research.
U-47700 is an opioid analgesic that acts as a selective agonist of the µ-opioid receptor with a Kd value of 5.3 nM compared to 910 nM for the κ-opioid receptor and has around 7.5 x the potency of morphine in animal models.
U-47700 was derived from an earlier opioid AH-7921.
U-47700 produce effects similar to those of other potent opioid agonists, including strong analgesia, sedation, euphoria.
