New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) identification

The Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science is a 10year £10million project designed to addresses the scientific deficiencies in many currently used evidence types. It seeks to raise the underlying basic scientific precepts to legal admissibility thereby restoring judicial and public confidence in the science. LRCFS works in partnership with judicial, legal, scientific, law enforcement and industrial colleagues. The key research questions that underpin the project relate to reframing the scientific activity inherent in all forensic evidence types: detection, recognition, comparison, interpretation/evaluation and communication.

As part of our research team you will also be undertaking a Post Graduate Certificate in research methods which integrates with, and runs alongside, your research work providing a frame work for the development of core research skills, creative research design, data processing, public engagement, communication and research leadership.

This project is a collaboration between the Centre for Excellence in New Psychoactive Substances Research which sits within the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID) at the University of Dundee and the Sutcliffe Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).

This 3 year project aims to provide a pro-active analytical and toxicologically focused response to established and newly emerging Synthetic Cannabinoid Receptor Antagonists (SCRAs), known collectively as “spice”. This will support front-line forensic and clinical staff directly who are dealing with such compounds in drug seizures and in biological samples from individuals who have consumed them. It takes into account how the substances are ingested and the poly-drug context in which they are taken. This provides a novel and fundamentally different approach to a rapidly developing drug problem. The project will involve the enantioselective synthesis and structural characterization of SCRA compounds, the elucidation of pyrolysis products from synthesised and seized products and in vitro and in vivo metabolic studies to link to toxicological analysis.