Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine

Current Research Projects

NEW APPROACH TO DOPING IN SPORT

The pressure to be the best often drives athletes to push themselves to extraordinary lengths both in and out of competition arenas.

Lured by the major incentives offered to the leading competitors, people who are into doping, promoting doping and using doping techniques manage to stay well ahead of the measurement techniques.

“We’re looking at a situation where sport will be based on pharmaceutical input rather than exercise input, as these people develop more and more molecular approaches to changing biochemistry and physiology,” said Dr Bon Gray, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Bond University’s Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine.

In order to arrest this alarming trend, Dr Gray and Dr Angela Van Daal, Professor of Forensic Services, are working towards developing a revolutionary new technique to combat doping.

“The effects of growth hormone in the body are long lived, even though its actual presence is not,” Dr Gray said.

“We’ve seen the long-term consequences illustrated with the German athletes involved in the systematic, statesponsored doping scandals of the 70s and 80s; many of whom now have on-going health problems as a result.

“Despite these implications, there’s no point denying that people will continue to try to carry out some sort of doping procedure, so the only thing we can do is to try to stay ahead of the game.”

Dr Gray and Dr Van Daal are taking a different approach to doping by looking inside lymphocytes to see if and how they respond to the presence of extra growth hormone in the system.

“It is not possible to measure the amount and concentration of growth hormone, so we have taken a more lateral approach,” Dr Gray said.

“Essentially, we’re studying the immune system to determine what specific impact the use of growth hormones has on the footprint of cells.

“Our work is based on the fact that, while genes themselves don’t change, the way they are expressed fluctuates throughout one’s life; some genes can be turned up, some can be turned down.

“Genes are expressed through a couple of processes. Through ‘transcription’, they become RNA, and through the later process, ‘translation’, they become protein.

“The immune system is always responding to outside influences, even though you’re not aware of it most of the time. These cells contain genes, which are expressed in various ways to give the cell its characteristics so our aim is to find a characteristic pattern of change in genes.

"If it works for this one drug, it should work for a lot of other banned erogenic aids”.

Key Project Team Members

  • Dr Bon Gray - Director of the Bond University Institute for Sport Research Centre

Contact

Dr Bon Gray

Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine
BOND UNIVERSITY QLD 4229
AUSTRALIA

Phone: +61 7 5595 4454
Email: bgray@bond.edu.au