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Gene testing in Tokyo to track dope cheats
International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach asked WADA “to collect the appropriate samples to be analysed by the new genetic sequencing method as early as the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) may introduce a new, potentially game-changing, way of testing for dope using genetic sequencing method at next year’s Tokyo Olympics.
In an address to delegates at WADA’s Fifth World Conference on Doping in Sport in Katowice, Poland, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach asked WADA “to collect the appropriate samples to be analysed by the new genetic sequencing method as early as the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, regardless of whether this testing method is already fully validated or not”.
“In the latter case, the IOC would analyse these samples after the full validation of this new testing method,” he added. “This new approach could be a groundbreaking method to detect blood doping.”
This is in addition to what WADA claims will be the most comprehensive pre-Games testing programme ever.
The possibility of testing athletes using genetic sequencing has been under research since at least 2006. The method Bach reffered to has been pioneered by Yannis Pitsiladis, a professor of sports science and genetics at the University of Brighton in England, and is designed specifically to detect blood doping. Blood doping is done in one of two ways: the athlete either receives a transfusion of his or her own blood, stored from before, a few days before an endurance event to increase the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in the body; or by using a banned substance which boosts the production of red blood cells.
Both are difficult to catch using current methods. The new way involves detecting changes to the athlete’s genetic signature—when blood has been manipulated, Pitsiladis and his team have found, certain genes are “turned on”.
Bach also pledged USD 5 million to WADA to help them finance a storage facility that will keep samples collected during the pre-Games testing for a period of ten years.
The gene detection method has the potential to become the single test to catch all forms of doping, and WADA has been considering making it mandatory for Olympic athletes to submit copies of their genetic code. Both the costs involved in getting a full genome sequence done, as well as the ethical implications of such a practice has prevented this from happening. The costs, at least, are coming down.
“It will be easy in the future to have full genome sequencing for a reasonable amount of money,” Olivier Rabin, WADA’s science director, told Wired in May 2018.
WADA already uses a sophisticated and intricate testing method called the “athlete biological passport.” It involves keeping a database of various markers of an athlete’s blood, urine, hormones and other body chemistry.
Testers look for variations in these markers over different periods of time to detect changes that are usually caused by doping. Samples are stored for a period of up to eight years.
