Greg LeMond accuses Lance Armstrong of using EPO

[Serutan]

Somehow, cyclists seem to die young these days.

Yes, I had forgotten about that. But now that you mention it, there have
been a suspiciously large number of such deaths.

 

[AVN]

It is DynEpo. Epo on biological basis which cannot be detected.

It's the first time I hear of DynEpo.
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have some additional information ?
Or a link (in English or German) which gives that info ?

 

[SanPellegrino]

It's the first time I hear of DynEpo.
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have some additional information ?
Or a link (in English or German) which gives that info ?

here

excerpt: "DynEPO: A new form of EPO undetectable by the UCI's urine test
In the ongoing battle against doping in sport, it seems there's always a new substance on the horizon that the detection bodies don't know about or can't detect. The imminent release of DynEPO, a new version of the commonly-used EPO will require another round of modifications to the current testing regime, as Anthony Tan writes.

A leading sports scientist has claimed that DynEPO - the latest drug approved by the European Union to fight kidney disease - poses a very serious threat to the cycling community. Although not wishing to be named for political reasons, the potential danger to endurance athletes, particularly within the sport of cycling, is clearly apparent:

"DynEPO is now much closer to the real thing - it looks just like normal human EPO, which means that even though it is produced via recombinant DNA techniques, the final product would not be detected by the urine test."

As the name implies, DynEPO (epoetin delta) is a variant of human erythropoietin - a hormone that stimulates "erythropoiesis", the natural production of red blood cells in the body. DynEPO has been designed for the treatment of anaemia related to chronic renal (kidney) disease - specifically for patients receiving or about to undergo dialysis, to elevate and maintain their red blood cell production.

"In theory, it would be undectectable by the urine test"
The claim that DynEPO will be undectable by the urine test developed by the French national doping laboratories in Châtenay-Malabry is of considerable concern, as the urine test has been the standard protocol for detection of EPO and its variants (such as NESP) since April 1 last year.

The good news is that the UCI is already aware of DynEPO. When Cyclingnews questioned Dr Mario Zorzoli, the high-profile Chief Medical Officer for the UCI, his response was:

"If you're talking about DynEPO, we're already on this one."

The bad news is that the UCI confirmed the urine test's inability to detect DynEPO:

"From what we have heard, DynEPO is produced naturally by human cells, not animal cells, so in theory, it would be undectectable by the urine test."

Legal wrangling delays global release
On March 26, 2002, the European Commission granted Transkaryotic Therapies (TKT), the biopharmaceutical company that has developed DynEPO, marketing authorisation for the fifteen countries of the European Union.

In a collaborative agreement, Transkaryotic Therapies will engage the services of Aventis Pharma, the pharmaceutical company of Aventis Worldwide, to propagate and market DynEPO for full-scale commercial production.

However TKT and Aventis are currently involved in litigation with both Amgen Inc and Kirin-Amgen Inc relating to the commercial production and sale of DynEPO.

California based Amgen is the world's largest biotechnology company, and are the proprietary owners for Epogen (Epoetin Alfa) - a substance much the same as Erythropoietin (EPO) - and Aranesp (NESP). Amgen developed EPO, Epogen and NESP to enable cancer and kidney disease patients to fight anemia.

Last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts concluded that DynEPO infringed several claims of patents asserted by Amgen, and the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom ruled that DynEPO infringed one claim of a patent asserted by Kirin-Amgen.

In both the U.S. and U.K., TKT and Aventis have filed appeals with decisions expected by 2003. With appeals pending in both the U.S. and U.K., a launch of DynEPO has not yet been planned.

What is the difference between normal EPO and DynEPO?
EPO is a peptide hormone, which means it is composed of a relatively short sequence of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins - produced in the body to stimulate the production of red blood cells. Commercially-produced EPO is made using recombinant DNA techniques, and such is known as r-HuEPO (recombinant human EPO).

When human EPO is produced in this way using non-human cell lines (the most common being hamster ovary cells), it ends up with slightly different characteristics than the EPO produced by human cells. It still has the same effect, but the amount of sugars attached to the hormone vary.

As a result, r-HuEPO has a slightly different charge and weight than EPO produced naturally within the body. The urine test can detect these differences in charge and weight, and can therefore determine if someone has recently injected EPO (within two to four days).

In contrast, DynEPO, although commerically-produced using similar DNA techniques as r-HuEPO, is now sufficiently similar to the "real thing". The similarity being that DynEPO, like human erythropoietin, is produced using human cell lines, not via animal cells. This similarity will, in theory, make DynEPO indistinguishable from naturally produced EPO using the current urine test. "

 

[SanPellegrino]

and in dutch as a special service

"Dynepo blijft onzichtbaar

Duursporters gebruiken een nieuwe Epovariant die niet op de markt is en die dopingtests niet kunnen opsporen. 'Dit spul lijkt precies op de Epo die mensen van nature aanmaken', zegt een anonieme dopingexpert in Cycling News. 'En hoewel het een bio-technologisch product is, kunnen dopingtests het niet in de urine aantonen."

 

[Shabbaman]

There's another way to track epo use: counting the number of new red blood cells. That should work for similar products I guess. It's very time consuming, and not fool proof though.

 

[AVN]

and in dutch as a special service

Thanks for the links

I think one of the problems with doping is that there isn't a real open discussion between UCI, organisers, cyclers, team managers, public etc.

For example the last years we have old Tour de France participators as co-reporters on the Dutch Television. Of course doping issues are sometimes discussed during the daily reportages, but I have never had the feeling that those "old participators" were honest about their own doping use in the past.

IMO that makes such discussions quite worthless.

I guess we need some disaster (eg. like Simpson) before we get such an open discussion.