amgen and EPO
 

I work in the Nephrology portion of the the healthcare industry...I have so for 15 years. I have managed a dialysis clinic for the last 10 years. The dialysis industry is by far the largest consumer of EPO. Virtually (1.5 million worldwide) every hemodialysis pt takes a dose of EPOGEN at least once per week for the remainder of their life (unless they get a transplant). I have attended coutnless Amgen seminiars. In the last few years amgen has developed a product called darbepoeitin (also known as ARANESP). Why is this important to cyclists?Well, Darbopoeitin is very long acting compared to EPO and a much much better drug. One of the unanticipated characteristics of ARANESP is that it is highly detectable. This new drug will likely replace EPOGEN (which is EPO) EPO is harder to detect becuase of fast clearance. Not so with its replacement. EPO will soon be a drug of the past and dopers will at least have one less option to cheat.

Just because it's a drug of the past doesn't mean it won't be available...

Outside of the US there are plenty of places where those "drugs of the past" are the only available medication and still get widely used.

I thought Amgen intentionally put some kind of marker on the EPO molecule to make it easier to detect?
Or are you saying that regardless of the marker it gets clearly too quickly anyway?

I think this is a lot like military stuff. You make some high tech protection device, then someone makes an armor piercing bullet and so on. back and forth.

The teams with the big $$$ will just find a way around the system and a doc to help avoid detection. Who knows? For all the money some of these teams have, maybe they can hire someone to test blood periodically to see if their new doping protocols can avoid detection

Other companies will produce it, without any kind of marker. If there is money to be made, it will not be stopped.

Aranesp has been used for a number of years by professionals. It was one of the key drugs found in Landuyt's possesion in the Museeeuw case. Codeword: "wasp" in Museeuw's seized diary.



edit: link added to the SMS transcriptions.....

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?...eb05/feb06news

If you Google epogen you can buy it online with prescription for around $25 a mililiter.

Cool.....maybe one day I'll be World Champion and win the Ronde and P-R 3 times each.....:D

amgen
 

Amgen is the first company to produce EPO and by far and away the largest producer..when they stop making it then its availibility will drop significantly. Anyway having a super high HCT ( like 60 and above) will kill a person. And with each individual the dose is vastly different. Everyone respons to Epogen differently. One person may see a minimal increase in HCT...while yet another person may have a hyper response sending their crit up quite a bit...even with a lower dose. With a super high HCT Weird things happen like nocturnal bradycardia (with eventual arrest) and capillary blockade and severe hypertension that can lead to stroke. Dangerous stuff.

Other companies manufacture epoeitin alfa...it's not going away any time soon

The reason that EPO is harder to detect is not because of its clearance, it is because it is identical to the erythropoetin that your body makes. Darbapoetin has additional carbohydrate side chains which make it detectable as a synthetic molecule. They don't detect EPO in your blood, they are measuring an unusually high hematocrit compared to baseline.

Actually Amgen is the only company that produces EPO. It is marketed by another company under a different brand name, but only produced by Amgen. Accuracy, folks!

Actually you can "detect" the likely hood that a person is taking EPO by 2-D gel electrophoresis. Most "natural" migrates to one isoelectric point while most of the "synthetic" migrates to a different isoelectric point on the gel.

Amgen makes Epogen, Johnson and Johnson was allowed to make Procrit under license from Amgen in 1995, They had a legal battle later on becuase J&J was supposed to market Procrit for Cancer patients, and not kindey/anemia patients, that territory was supposed to be exclusively Amgen's...... same drug.. funny.... the patent runs out in 2015, then it will become even cheaper.

Outside the U.S. you will see it sold as Eprex,NeoRecorman, CERA and Dynepo etc...

Actually, the human body is the only company that produces EPO, or erythropoetin.

The trade name for Epoetin Alfa as made by Amgen is Epogen.
Ortho Biotech, the other company that makes Epoetin Alfa, is Procrit.
As Smoothie pointed out, there are other foreign manufacturers.

Accuracy, folks! :rolleyes: