Robert Oberlender

Robert Arthur Oberlender (born July 25, 1956) is an American medicinal chemist known for his work in the areas of serotonergic and dopaminergic drugs as well as drug discrimination. He is most well-known for his discovery and development of lisdexamfetamine (lysine–dextroamphetamine), which is now marketed as a pharmaceutical drug under the brand name Vyvanse and is prescribed as a misuse-resistant stimulant in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other conditions.

Oberlender attended the pharmacy school of Temple University in his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, receiving a bachelor's degree, and worked for two years as a pharmacist. Then, he started a Ph.D. program in medicinal chemistry at Purdue University in 1981. He worked in the lab of psychedelic chemist David E. Nichols studying psychedelics, entactogens, and related drugs, first completing his Ph.D. and then continuing in the lab as a postdoc. His first publication with the lab was in 1984 and his last publication with the group was in 1995, a period spanning more than 10 years. His Ph.D. thesis, published in 1989, was on stereoselective actions of psychedelics, including the lysergamides LA-Aziridine and LA-3Cl-SB and the DOx drugs DOIB and DOSB, as well as on drug discrimination studies of entactogens, including MDA, MDMA, MBDB, and MDAI.

Oberlender personally self-experimented with some of the psychoactive drugs synthesized in the Nichols lab. In the mid-1990s, he tried the obscure psychedelic tryptamine 5-MeO-pyr-T, a synthetic analogue of 5-MeO-DMT, and accidentally took too high of a dose of it without a trip sitter present. While under the influence of 5-MeO-pyr-T, Oberlender stripped naked, began wandering the Purdue University campus in a fugue state, and was apprehended by campus police. His case did not end up going to court, but the incident did result in Oberlender having to leave Nichols's lab. His experience with 5-MeO-pyr-T was subsequently published anonymously in Alexander Shulgin's 1997 book TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved). The chemist publicly shared further details of the incident during an interview with psychedelic journalist Hamilton Morris in 2021, describing it as a cautionary tale of the risks of self-experimentation with little-known psychoactive drugs and the importance of careful dose escalation and of having a trip sitter.

After leaving the Nichols lab, Oberlender worked as an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. In 2000, he joined New River Pharmaceuticals in Blacksburg, Virginia and served as a director of drug misuse science. While at New River Pharmaceuticals, Oberlender had a key role in discovering and developing the misuse-resistant dextroamphetamine prodrug and psychostimulant lisdexamfetamine, which had the developmental code name NRP-104. Oberlender and colleagues patented lisdexamfetamine in 2006 and 2007. New River Pharmaceuticals was purchased by Shire in 2007. That same year, lisdexamfetamine was initially approved and introduced for medical use under the brand name Vyvanse in the United States. Following these events, Oberlender started working at Synthonics in Blackburg, Virginia and began developing metal-coordinated pharmaceutical drugs at the company.