CaaMTech Collaborates with the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute to Study Shulgin Compounds

CaaMTech, Inc. and the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute, Inc. (ASRI) jointly announced an agreement today to carry out structural and chemical analyses of previously unreported compounds designed and synthesized by the late Dr. Alexander Shulgin. 

ASRI is a psychedelics discovery, development, and educational organization dedicated to continuing and extending the work of Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin.  Known as “the Godfather of psychedelics,” Dr. Shulgin was a biochemist and pharmacologist known for his documented synthesis – and personal testing – of hundreds of novel psychoactive compounds. Alongside his wife Ann, Dr. Shulgin published “PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story” in 1991 and “TiHKAL: The Continuation” in 1997 (Phenethylamines and Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved, respectively) documenting his synthesis and testing of novel psychedelics. Dr. Shulgin’s groundbreaking research into novel psychoactive compounds was foundational to psychedelic chemistry and the CaamTech-ASRI research collaboration is a continuation of that legacy.

Several hundred compounds, collectively known as the Shulgin Vault, were created by Dr. Shulgin at his famed laboratory in Lafayette, California. Many of these compounds have not yet been characterized and some may have therapeutic value, although their effects remain unknown. As a first step, compounds will be transferred to CaaMTech to be crystallized and analyzed using X-ray crystallography to determine their crystal structures.

Dr. Shulgin was able to design, synthesize, and test hundreds of compounds in his lab in Lafayette, California, but he did not have the benefit of modern equipment, such as X-ray diffractometers. Since that time, X-ray crystallography has become the gold standard of chemical characterization.  Compounds supplied by ASRI to CaaMTech under the agreement will be transferred to the Manke Lab at UMass Dartmouth where they will be purified to yield single crystals.  The compounds will then undergo X-ray powder diffraction analysis to determine their crystal structures so that future research can be conducted with rigorously pure, well-characterized molecules.