Tracer agreement WADA and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

[DAOTEC]

Wada-pharmaceutical agreement to "draw" EPO and steroids
Co-operation between WADA and pharmaceutical companies could boost anti-doping fight.
The Wada wanted a new step in the fight against doping by signing an agreement with the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, with the aim of making life harder for fraudsters. Tracer molecules, in fact, will be included in certain drugs such as EPO and some steroids. With these tracers, it will become easier to find out who the coffin.
Great satisfaction within the Wada: "The aim is to ensure that the pharmaceutical industry would become our partner. They are ideally placed to act directly on the substances and make us their great experience, "said Olivier Rabin, WADA's scientific director. More:http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/4212/Co-operation-between-WADA-and-pharmaceutical-companies-could-boost-anti-doping-fight.aspx

Will it help ??

 

[santacruz]

but won't this only help catch people if the riders use the name brand drugs... i'm sure the cheap chinese or mexican knockoffs will be free of tracers.

 

[Colm.Murphy]

but won't this only help catch people if the riders use the name brand drugs... i'm sure the cheap chinese or mexican knockoffs will be free of tracers.

The drugs from China and Russia will not include any tracer molecules.

Good luck shutting that black market down.

Wait, re-reading the article and three things stick out:

1. "WADA is currently in talks..."
2. "...but there was no official collaboration with WADA"
3. "thoughts of official co-operation"

given this, it sounds extremely premature to proclaim an agreement tracer molecules "will be included"....

DAOTEC, did you even read the link?

Perhaps a better question to ask is "will it happen" rather than "will it help"?

I sincerely doubt that big pharma will add anything to these medicines. Doing so would require re-submission to FDA approval. Too much money to do that. Highly doubtful.

 

[biokemguy]

Tracers are a myth

The idea of tracers or markers added to a pharmaceutical substance is complete myth and misunderstanding by journalists that don't understand science.

From the linked article

...the plans don’t involve a marker as such...

What the pharma companies can do and would be great help to slowing the doping in sports is to help WADA in development of tests for new drugs.

Either by providing the drugs in question to WADA early in their development, or becoming directly involved in test development by sharing their own analytical methods with WADA.

 

[Rip:30]

No way this is going to happen. To many unknowns if you start changing the structure of these compounds.

 

[Rip:30]

Also wonder what portion of sales of these comes from athletes? Would pharm even want to stop use in sports if they could...

 

[python]

Tracer molecules, in fact, will be included in certain drugs such as EPO and some steroids.

Diotec, please stop your blatant misinterpreting the news and misinforming the forum if you don’t understand the material you link. It’ll go a long way to help you with credibility regarding the botnews role you apparently chose for yourself

DAOTEC, did you even read the link?

even if he did I doubt he’d understand what he reads. Everyone should take a note of his false, ignorant interpretations on some stories.

The idea of tracers or markers added to a pharmaceutical substance is complete myth and misunderstanding by journalists that don't understand science.

right. except in this case the velonation article has NOT shown any misunderstanding of facts as they accurately quoted wada. again, it was daotec who falsified the news with his personal ignorant comments about tracer molecules.

The cooperation between wada and the pharma industry was exemplified by the joint efforts in finding test for cera. Specifically, it included help with two things:
(i) provision of the actual novel drug samples and its chemical signature BEFORE their commercial stage
(ii) provision of some necessary reagents (chemicals used in the test research)

 

[Martinello]

Also wonder what portion of sales of these comes from athletes? Would pharm even want to stop use in sports if they could...

The amount of athletes (bike riders, swimmers, XC-skiier, biathletes, +800m runners) using e.g. EPO is dwarfed by the amount of EPO used for i.e. nephropathic patients worldwide. There is one heck of a difference between the epo-consumption of a micro-dosing bike rider and an epo-guzzling end-stage kidney failure patient.

But as RIP:30 pointed out - the addition of tracers to already marketed drugs is out of the question - new FDA/EMEA applications, phase I-IV trials, new GMP-compliant manufacturing facilities etc. would be way too expensive.

 

[RTMcFadden]

With all due respect, I believe you guys are being a little myopic regarding this topic. There are two issues here: the first is technical and the second is ethical.

From a technical perspective, this is possible in a number of different ways. Drugs, expect biopharmaceuticals, are salts. So, technically, you can tag the molecule by changing the paired conjugate to the active moiety. For biopharms, modification or addition of inert functional groups (glycans) are possible. As already pointed out, there are numerous hurdles that need to be overcome, as these would be considered NCEs. Although, one should note that current legislative activities regarding generic biopharms could potentially reduce or eliminate a number of these due to bio-similarity. Ultimately, I really don't care to discuss this aspect.

Where I think you guys are missing the point is in changing the matrix as opposed to the moiety. That is changing or adding something to the final product (consumable) that can be traced. This would be similar to the way in which explosive are tagged with inert elements, such as glass beads, organic micro particles, or tiny plastic chips. As an example for injectables, changing the preservative from, say thimerasol to something else would be plausible. For solid dosage forms, changing, say, the lubricant from Mag Stearate to something else would be plausible. Adding compounds would also be plausible. These changes would require pre-approval from the FDA, but could avoid many of the costly elements an NCE would require.

Notwithstanding the above discussion, from an ethical perspective, this suggestion is absolutely horrendous. I personally believe that once you pass the protective barriers to enter the blood stream, there is no such thing as "inert." So, changing to ingredients with an established function in the matrix because they would be detectable is a very slippery slope. Adding compounds for the sole purpose of detecting them, would be beyond irresponsible, in my opinion, it would be criminal. One need look no further than the controversy surrounding the use of thimerasol (mercury based preservative) to understand the implications and the justifiable resistance to such a suggestion. As such, I believe this will never happen.

(Disclaimer: For those of you that understand this subject matter, I have take some liberties to simplify the concepts under discussion and amplify the points so that others may follow it.)