Couch-Potato Drugs Are WADA’s First Banned for Gene-Doping Ties!

Jan. 14 -- Two drugs that activate genetic switches, fooling the body into believing it has exercised, are the first to be added to the Olympic sports prohibited list for their ties to gene doping. The drugs, whose effects were first disclosed in a report published online by the journal Cell on July 31, were added to the nine-page list issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency under the “Gene Doping” classification as of Jan. 1. It’s a category that is likely to grow over the next five to 10 years, said Dr. Gary Wadler, who heads WADA’s Prohibited List Committee, as gene therapy becomes “part of the matrix of what physicians have to treat patients.”
“There’s gene-therapy stuff going on in research labs everywhere in the world,” Wadler said in an interview at his Manhasset, New York, office. “I think they’re going to cause breakthroughs, and those breakthroughs, if they have any application to enhance athletic performance, then you’ll ultimately see it banned.”
One of the drugs is a synthetic protein called Aicar that, when given to mice, improved endurance by 44 percent after four weeks, even without exercise. The other is an experimental medicine made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc, GW1516, which remodeled the mice’s skeletal muscle and raised their endurance levels by 75 percent when the animals also ran on a treadmill.

WADA’s 2009 prohibited list includes nearly 70 anabolic steroids; about 60 stimulants; hormones; diuretics and other masking agents; blood-doping methods; and several narcotics. The Montreal-based agency oversees anti-drug programs for Olympic-level sports.

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"Increased submaximal insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in mouse skeletal muscle after treadmill exercise"

Taku Hamada, Edward B. Arias, and Gregory D. Cartee
Muscle Biology Laboratory, Division of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan //Submitted 7 April 2006 ; accepted in final form 21 June 2006

http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/101/5/1368