Dehydrosecodine is a terpene

indole alkaloid Indole alkaloids are a class of alkaloids containing a structural moiety of indole; many indole alkaloids also include isoprene groups and are thus called terpene indole or secologanin tryptamine alkaloids. Containing more than 4100 known differe ...

. The compound is believed to be an unstable ''O''-acetylated secodine type intermediate in the formation of catharanthine and tabersonine from stemmadenine.Qu, Y., Easson, M. E., Simionescu, R., Hajicek, J., Thamm, A. M., Salim, V., & De Luca, V. (2018). Solution of the multistep pathway for assembly of corynanthean, strychnos, iboga, and aspidosperma monoterpenoid indole alkaloids from 19E-geissoschizine. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(12), 3180-3185. The enzymes involved forming dehydrosecodine or utilizing it as a substrate for further chemical reactions are currently unknown.

References

Tryptamine alkaloids Methyl esters {{alkaloid-stub