rata de sentina said:Current EPOs are not synthetic in the chemical sense, they are recombinant and purified from cultures of cells overproducing the protein. The basic protein structure is easy to control in this system and essentially all of the EPOs are identical in this sense. It is just that the cells also modify the protein by adding various sugar structures to it, this process is very difficult to control as we don't really understand it yet. Depending on the cell type (not just species bu tissue too) used to produce the EPO this will affect the sugar structures.
Even producing EPO using human cells (DynEPO, or others) versus the hamster origin cells (CHO) used for other EPOs still doesn't give you and endogenous like protein from a detection point of view although they all work biologically OK.
I guess that answers my question asking if it would be easy or not. Talking about attached sugars determining the acidity of the EPO and the test looking at the acidity of the EPO in the urine made me think it might be fairly easy. Like adding different sugar sources to brew different types of alcoholic beverages (ie mead vs beer). But I guess not.
I performed a patent search and found several patents from the 80's and 90's describing processes of purifying EPO out of human urine, especially out of anemic people where the concentration of EPO in the urine is greater. Seems like that might look like your own EPO on a test (unless the purifying process changes the pH) and someone may be able to reproduce this manner of EPO production on a small scale specifically for athletes.
So count me in for the earlier plan of setting up shop in Girona. I'm not a chemist, or a doctor, or experienced setting up shady businesses, or have any connections in pro cycling, or speak the language, or... but damnit I can collect lots of human urine!