Disposition of catecholamine-derived alkaloids in mammalian systems.

Tetrahydropapaveroline, the tetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloid derived from dopamine, is converted in vivo by rats and by rat liver and brain preparations to tetrahydroprotoberberine alkaloids. The latter alkaloids have also been identified for the first time in the urine of parkinsonian patients receiving L-dopa therapy. These findings suggest that man, like plants, may have the ability to elaborate several classes of alkaloids with potentially important pharmacological consequences. Thus, this newly demonstrated ability of mammalian systems to evoke the biosynthesis of benzyl-tetrahydroisoquinoline-derived alkaloids - a capability previously considered unique to plants - elects the tetrahydroprotoberberine alkaloids as representative of the first class of a possible constellation of complex mammalian alkaloids elaborated from the neuroamines.