Pharma data play larger role in Olympic drug tests

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Some of the world’s biggest drugmakers
are playing a larger role in anti-doping efforts at this year’s Winter
Olympics: They’re providing information on drugs that once would have
been considered proprietary trade secrets.
GlaxoSmithKline, Amgen
and Roche are among the drugmakers that have begun sharing "confidential
research and data" with anti-doping officials about experimental drugs
they are developing, as part of an effort to stay one step ahead of drug
cheats.
The increasing cooperation comes as doping athletes move
away from easy-to-spot drugs like anabolic steroids to more
sophisticated, obscure performance-boosting substances — many of which
were first formulated in pharmaceutical research labs.
"If you
want to predict the future of doping it’s essential that you have
collaborations with the pharmas," says Olivier Rabin, science director
of the World Anti-Doping Authority, which oversees the testing standards
for the Olympics and other international competitions.
Building
on its agreements with individual companies, in 2011 WADA signed a
"declaration on cooperation" with the Biotech Industry Organization,
which represents most of the world’s biotech drugmakers. Under the
agreement, companies voluntarily pass along early information about
drugs in their pipelines that could be used to boost endurance, build
muscle or aid recovery.
Some of the drugs WADA is looking for
never even made it out of the laboratory. Drugs like GW501516, an
experimental compound from GlaxoSmithKline, which was briefly hailed as
"exercise in a pill" after studies in mice showed it lowered fat,
boosted muscle and improved exercise endurance by nearly 80 percent.
Glaxo
initially hoped to develop the drug to boost "good cholesterol," but
the company pulled the plug in 2009 after animal studies showed links to
tumors in the liver, bladder, stomach and other organs.
Yet last
year WADA-affiliated laboratories caught five professional cyclists
using the substance, despite a rare warning from the agency in March
about its toxic side effects. The drug continues to be promoted on
online forums and websites that traffic in doping products, many which
are mixed by overseas laboratories in places like Thailand and Mexico.
"A
lot of what dopers are looking for is under the radar. They’re looking
for drugs that were terminated and that enforcement agencies don’t know
about yet," says Mark Luttman, who coordinates Glaxo’s anti-doping
program with WADA.
Dr. Don Catlin, a pioneer of drug testing, says
anti-doping organizations are often financially outgunned by the very
athletes they are supposed to oversee.
He points out that WADA’s
annual budget of roughly $28 million is less than the $29 million-a-year
salary of baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez, who was suspended in
January for reportedly using a cocktail of banned substances, including
testosterone, peptides and growth hormone. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency
reported that Rodriguez’s regimen also included dozens of blood tests to
make sure the drugs were metabolizing at undetectable levels.
"We
need the help and assistance of the legitimate pharmaceutical
industry," says Catlin, former head of the UCLA Olympic Analytical
Laboratory. "We have to have access to their clinical trials and drug
standards before we can develop a test."
Catlin says he learned
the importance of such cooperation at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt
Lake City, when he discovered a new oxygen-boosting drug in urine
samples from three skiers.
The drug, known as Aranesp, had been
launched just a few months earlier by biotech giant Amgen Inc. to treat
anemia, a blood disorder that affects patients with kidney disease and
cancer. By increasing levels of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, Aranesp
can help sickly patients perform simple tasks, like walk up a flight of
stairs or lift themselves out of bed. But in athletes it can provide a
super boost in energy and endurance, especially in long-distance events.
"It
was the farthest thing from my mind that this might be an agent with
doping potential, we were thinking about treating seriously ill
patients" says Steve Elliott, the retired Amgen scientist who developed
Aranesp. "But obviously that changes when you find out that your drug
was doped with."
Aranesp was a follow-up to Amgen’s first
blockbuster, Epogen, another blood booster that was at the center of a
doping scandal at the 1998 Tour de France. But athletes apparently did
not expect officials to be testing for Amgen’s next-generation drug at
the 2002 games.
With the cooperation Elliott, WADA officials
secretly developed a urine test for Aranesp in the weeks leading up to
the games. Ultimately one skier from Spain and two skiers from Russia
were disqualified from the competition based on their test results.
In
2008, Swiss drugmaker Roche introduced its own oxygen-boosting drug
called Mircera. Again, WADA officials worked with the company to develop
a test for the drug, catching four athletes at the Summer Olympics in
Beijing.
The industry’s involvement with anti-doping efforts
reached a new level in 2012 as GlaxoSmithKline provided a $30-million
laboratory for testing officials at the London Summer Olympics. It was
the first time any private sponsor had funded such a project at the
Olympics.
Testing experts suggest the assistance is overdue.
"Fifteen years ago the drug companies would never think about helping a lab — today they do,"
says Catlin.
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