There is actually a reasonable amount of literature on kratom, so it is possible a pharmaceutical product will be derived from it.
Probably the biggest issue with most (at present, all?) pharmaceutical opioids is the side effect of respiratory depression - this kills a lot of people. Because kratom's active alkaloids don't recruit β-arrestin interactions, side effects like respiratory depression, constipation and tolerance are absent or greatly reduced, which should make mitragynine and 7-OH-mitragynine perfect candidates for a new, safe opioid drug[1].
But patents are probably a huge barrier to this ever happening - you can't patent a plant. No new, patentable extraction methods seem to be required, and a patentable, stronger synthetic or semi-synthetic analogue may not exist[2].
I'm going to guess this is for patenting strains that are bred or genetically modified? E.g. to provide better disease resistance or higher quantities of substances?
I had meant the 'original', 'natural' plant, but a fair point.
Probably the biggest issue with most (at present, all?) pharmaceutical opioids is the side effect of respiratory depression - this kills a lot of people. Because kratom's active alkaloids don't recruit β-arrestin interactions, side effects like respiratory depression, constipation and tolerance are absent or greatly reduced, which should make mitragynine and 7-OH-mitragynine perfect candidates for a new, safe opioid drug[1].
But patents are probably a huge barrier to this ever happening - you can't patent a plant. No new, patentable extraction methods seem to be required, and a patentable, stronger synthetic or semi-synthetic analogue may not exist[2].
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3926195/
[2] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b00360?journalCode...