Science Advancement Conference: The chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency has expressed concern about the possibility of advanced genetic technology being used to enhance sporting performance. "Exactly the kind of thing we were afraid of is here," he stated over the weekend.
Mr Dick Pound's comments came as the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle heard about new research involving the "genetic enhancement" of laboratory rats.
Their muscles grew in both size and strength by up to 30 per cent, and a proportion of the strength remained despite a discontinuation of treatments. The improvement doubled when the enhancing injections of a genetically modified virus were matched by an exercise programme.
WADA has attempted to prepare for this latest technological assault on its blanket ban on doping and illegal physical enhancement. "We really did botch it with the drug scene, partly because we didn't know what we were looking for," Mr Pound said. "With genetic therapy we want to be there from the start," he added, and any response would have to be applied internationally.
WADA has now decided to use some if its research budget to fund work towards the development of a test that could expose the use of genetic enhancement of sporting performance. "We are inviting applications for research in that area," he said.
He acknowledged his concern about the issue. "I am certainly worried about the potential. I don't think we were going to find this in Athens. I don't think we will see this in Beijing. Maybe by 2012."
Prof Lee Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, believes that his technique for genetic enhancement of lab rats could potentially be used to benefit elite athletes. It could also be employed in a more benign way to help patients rehabilitating from injury-induced muscle wasting and elderly people with diminished mobility due to muscular weakness.
Genetic enhancement of this kind applied as a way to help an athlete build muscle mass and strength would present fresh detection challenges for WADA officials seeking to block artificial enhancement, Prof Sweeney said.
"In many cases, policing such abuse in the sports community will be much more difficult than in the case of drugs, since detection will be much more difficult."
The techniques needed to genetically enhance an athlete are already being developed in the treatment of disease, according to Prof Sweeney. Early human clinical trials are already underway, with target diseases including muscular dystrophy.
Prof Sweeney's lab successfully engineered the adeno-associated virus (AAV), inserting an extra gene for a growth factor used by the body to build muscle tissue.
"What we saw was that the rate at which the muscles grew and the size and strength of the muscles were 15 to 30 per cent greater than normal. This was in sedentary mice," Prof Sweeney told the conference.
"Furthermore, if we injected the muscles when the mice were middle-aged, then allowed the mice to reach old age, the muscles did not get weaker." As with humans, mice tend to lose muscle as they age, but this process did not take hold in the test animals.