On October 4 - 7, 2019, Head of RUSADA Department of Science Anna Kondakova took part in the 18th Annual USADA Symposium on Anti-Doping Science, which was held in Tokyo, Japan on the eve of 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In total 98 specialists from more than 30 countries participated in the event.
The annual USADA Symposium on Anti-Doping Science, which was first held in 2001, gathers external experts, representatives of anti-doping laboratories, as well as scientific and medical experts from anti-doping organizations at one discussion forum to address current scientific problems. The aim of the Symposium is to exchange experience, identify the most pressing issues for international anti-doping community, as well as to generate proposals that can be implemented to develop scientific approach to combatting doping in sports.
The latest edition of the Symposium was dedicated to “Emerging Drugs and Technologies” in order to emphasize that modern technologies and innovative approaches are crucial to protect clean sports and implement effective anti-doping programs. As part of the agenda, speakers and participants discussed improving practical and predictive approaches to target testing, capabilities of new methods for collecting and analyzing biomaterials, gene doping and monitoring of athletes' performance.
On the first day, the participants discussed mass spectrometry as a method for detecting prohibited substances with high accuracy and sensitivity, as well as advances in extraction, identification and quantification of prohibited substances.
The second day was devoted to progress achieved in detection of specific classes of prohibited substances, such as proteins and peptides, as well as alternative matrices for sampling of biomaterials and a threat represented by gene doping.
On the third day participants discussed approaches to analyzing athletes’ performance and integration of such approaches into routine practice of anti-doping organizations for more effective planning of target testing.