David E. Nichols

1944– · American · Purdue University; founding president of the Heffter Research Institute

Medicinal chemist whose work established much of what is known about how psychedelics bind at 5-HT2A. Created the lysergamides AL-LAD, ETH-LAD and PRO-LAD, the entactogen MDAI, and the dopamine agonist dihydrexidine. His lab developed the N-benzylphenethylamine motif as a research tool; the potent 25x-NBOMe compounds built on it were the work of others, and he has been public about regretting how that work was taken up.

Compounds credited overall: dozens of novel compounds across ~300 published papers

On this site

• Psychedelics
• AL-LAD C22H27N3O first synthesis, 1984
• ETH-LAD C21H27N3O first synthesis, 1984

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Nichols