Equine Biologic Passport

The Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) represents a powerful tool for improving the efficiency and breadth of the anti-doping system. Detection of anabolic agents and growth promoter abuse are known to affect endogenous factors and, therefore, would fit perfectly into longitudinal followup as markers constitute the foundation of the model. The ABP is a paradigm that infers the use of prohibited substance by monitoring discriminant biomarkers, which persist long after the original substance has been eliminated. Like human athletes, equine athletes have a unique biological fingerprint that can be identified by monitoring biomarkers. The Athlete Biological Passport in human athletics is employed as targeted Modules to control out-of-competition abuse of 1) blood doping agents and 2) androgen anabolic steroids. Additional Modules to monitor/ control doping are under development for future implementation (i.e., transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and genomics). An individualized “Equine Biological Passport” would be used to enable monitoring of the molecular makeup, the proteome, of each individual horse, providing very precise measurements of their biological baselines. Hundreds of biomarkers, thousands of genes and millions of proteins have been identified in humans and animals using bio-molecular approaches, usually concentrating on monitoring parameters to better understand health and disease. These unique biomarkers can be monitored to detect and deter drug abuse in performance horses. The initial module, Steroidal Module, will aim to identify endogenous anabolic androgenic steroids when administered exogenously and other indirect steroid substances. Despite advances in analytical instrumentation, doping with proteins, peptides, and other emerging products of biotechnology is difficult, if not impossible, to detect by established drug testing methodologies. It is critical to implement and advance new modules in order to detect and deter doping. Therefore, during the five-year project, new modules (Genomic and Proteomic) will be developed and validated then combined with the initial Equine Biological Passport’s Steroidal Module.