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Title
CHIRAL SEPARATION AND QUANTITATION OF KHAT DESIGNER DRUG – SYNTHETIC
CATHINONES – IN URINE AND PLASMA
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Mohammed A. Meetani
Defense Date
10 November 2016
Abstract
This dissertation is concerned with the latest class of the new designer drugs (NDDs) which overruns the
world in the last few years as “legal high” drugs, under the name of bath salts or synthetic cathinones.
Bath salts are a group of central nervous system stimulants that consists mainly of synthetic cathinone
derivatives. In nature, cathinone (β-keto amphetamine) exists in the leaves of the Catha edulis plant which
can be found easily in the region of northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. All synthetic cathinone
derivatives contain a chiral center and most probably sold out as a racemic mixture. Commonly, one of
the enantiomers will have greater psychological effect in human biological system than the other one.
Therefore it’s important to distinguish between synthetic cathinone enantiomers. Enantiomeric separation
and determination of these NDD’s may give information about the source of these synthetic drugs and the
raw materials that were used in the synthesis process and also facilitates the drug tracking.
The main objective of this dissertation is to develop and validate sensitive and selective analytical methods
that use direct and indirect chiral separation and quantitation for synthetic cathinones in real biological
samples using chromatography coupled with mass spectrometer detector (MSD) and Diode Array detector
(DAD).
The study goals were achieved successfully by developing and validation of three different methods for
chiral separation and quantitation for 65 compounds of synthetic cathinones. Enantiomer quantitation in
urine and plasma were performed and reported for the first time in this study; also it’s the first time to
report the chiral separation of tertiary amine cathinones where we were able to separate 19 out 22 of
them.
RASHED HUMAID AHMAD KHALFAN
BIN HUZAIM ALREMEITHI
Department of Chemistry
College of Science
Dissertation