an “analogue” is a drug that is very similar to the original drug, but might have a few slight adjustments/tweaks to the molecular structure. An analogy to help you understand might be like different variants of coronavirus.
Some analogues will be worthless (or downright harmful), and others might represent a slight improvement in some parameter of the original drug (for example, it might last slightly longer before being metabolised and excreted, or it might bind more specifically to the receptor target you want it to)
the benefit of creating and screening analogues is twofold:
1) you can get rid of unwanted side effects/find new desirable effects
2) you have created an entirely new drug and can patent that
MDMA as the original drug has actually been around for >100 years and was first synthesised by German chemists in 1912 in an effort to find a drug that would help stop bleeding.
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