BPAP
guinea pig
The Dose Guy’s verdictSep 1, 20263 sources
A fascinating mechanism with no human data and a dosing problem that makes self-experimentation close to guesswork. BPAP amplifies catecholamine neuron firing at picomolar concentrations, with a bell-shaped curve that means more is not more, more is nothing. The animal neuroprotection story is real but contradictory: one longevity study says it works, a later one says it does not. Nobody has given it to a person. If the dopaminergic neuroprotection story is what drew you here, selegiline, BPAP’s parent compound, is a prescribed drug with decades of human data. The mechanism earns interest. The evidence does not earn a protocol.
What it is
A synthetic benzofuran derivative from the lab of Jozsef Knoll, the pharmacologist who created selegiline. Knoll’s concept was the “catecholamine activity enhancer,” a compound that amplifies the natural firing rate of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin neurons at picomolar concentrations. Selegiline has a weak version of this effect at low doses; BPAP was designed to be the pure, potent version. The unusual property is the concentration window: BPAP boosts vesicular dopamine release in brain slices with a bell-shaped curve that falls off on both sides. Go higher and the enhancer effect disappears, and at nanomolar concentrations BPAP starts inhibiting monoamine reuptake instead, with IC50 values of 42 nM for dopamine, 52 nM for norepinephrine, and 640 nM for serotonin. Two different pharmacologies at two different concentration ranges, three orders of magnitude apart.
That curve is what makes BPAP interesting to pharmacology and impractical to self-experiment with. Translating picomolar slice concentrations into an oral dose for a person is pure speculation without human PK data, and BPAP has none.
What the research shows
No human trial, no human PK, no human safety data. The animal base is real but internally contradictory:
Realistic protocols
I am not building a dosing protocol for a compound whose active range is measured in picomolar concentrations in rat brain slices, with no human pharmacokinetics to anchor a translation. The few community reports that exist use doses loosely adapted from the rat studies, typically in the microgram-to-low-milligram range, but nobody knows whether those doses produce the right brain concentration in a person, or whether they land on the rising side, the peak, or the falling side of the bell curve. If you run it, you do not know what you are getting.
Side effects
No human side-effect data exists:
Where to buy
No live listings from tracked vendors right now.
