COTININE

Whenever I attempt to classify the vague, quasi-tranparent, clarifying effects of piracetam -- the best comparison I can make is low dose nicotine. Although I was aware that piracetam and other members of the racetam family modulate the cholinergic system in a variety of ways (some through direct agonism of the nicotinic AChR) I had never considered any direct structural similarities between the classes.

Much of nicotine's pro-cognitive, nootropic, memory-enhancing properties are a product of its primary metabolite, cotinine. So I was amazed to find that cotinine shares the methylpyrrolidone nucleus of the racetam family. The nitrogen in piracetam's ethylamine side chain could even overlap cotinine's nitrogen in the pyridine ring. There's an enormous number of cotinine/piracetam hybrids that are totally unexplored. The only pyridine containing racetam I'm aware of is Nicoracetam, which pulls up nothing on google scholar, in fact I can find no mention of it outside wikipedia, so I'm not even sure why it has an entry.

I would be especially interested in a simple pyridine substitutions on the side chain, or conformationally constrained tricyclics or, heck, why not throw on a 4-phenyl and alpha methyl and make it an amphetamine, nicotine, piracetam chimera! I'm aware it probably wouldn't retain the positive effects of any in the three. Still, I would be surprised if there weren't a winner somewhere in the midst...