Involvement of the health industry in the fight against doping in sport

Most substances used for doping in sport are legitimate pharmaceutical products deviated from their intended therapeutic applications. One of the major challenges for anti-doping authorities, in anticipation of future doping trends, is to assess the doping potential of drugs in development by the health industry and to timely develop anti-doping analytical methods to detect their abuse before such drugs become available to athletes intending to use them as doping agents. In this regard, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has recently consolidated several agreements with representatives from the pharmaceutical sector in order to establish a framework of collaboration and to facilitate the identification and transfer of information on drugs in development. The context of the collaborative effort between WADA and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, as well as the role of drug regulatory agencies in an integrated process in support of the fight against doping in sport are described in this article.