MILWAUKEE, Aug. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers have discovered a new
 method for detecting gene doping in the blood, according to new research
 featured in the August issue of Molecular Therapy. Molecular Therapy is the
 official journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT).
     Doping has become a major problem for amateur and professional sports.
 While there have been highly publicized scandals, such as the detection of
 steroid use by Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson in 1988, the problem of doping
 quietly affects all levels of many sports -- from high school football on up.
 It is also not limited to the use of anabolic steroids, but includes the use
 of recombinant stimulant proteins and "blood doping" -- injecting large
 numbers of red blood cells into the serum to enhance endurance.
     A newer challenge to those screening athletes for performance enhancing
 agents is gene doping. The premise is simple -- rather than injecting proteins
 or drugs that are easily detected in urine, users inject the gene encoding the
 stimulant factor. While steroid use and recombinant proteins can often be
 detected in athletes' urine, it has been thought that stimulant factors
 produced by users' own bodies would be much harder to distinguish from natural
 factors produced in the body.
     Phillipe Moullier and colleagues from the French National Doping
 Laboratories have shown that monkeys that have been genetically doped with
 erythropoietin (EPO) have an altered form of the blood cell-boosting factor in
 their serum. In this case, the EPO gene was injected into the monkeys' muscle.
 Muscle is thought to be a likely target for gene dopers, as it is quite
 abundant and easily accessible by injection. However, the EPO protein produced
 in the muscle exhibited different post-translational processing than the
 endogenous protein, resulting in easy detection, providing hope that gene
 doping may not be as difficult to detect as thought, at least when muscle is
 used as the target tissue. Further studies will be necessary to evaluate
 whether the urine test for EPO can detect the altered protein.
     The American Society of Gene Therapy is the largest medical professional
 organization representing researchers and scientists dedicated to discovering
 new gene therapies. ASGT was established in 1996, and has grown nearly 3,000
 members. It is committed to promoting and fostering the general field of
 research involving gene therapy and to promoting professional and public
 education in all areas of gene therapy.
 
 

SOURCE  American Society of Gene Therapy