Fighting doping in sports
In an effort to show its support towards a doping-free sports world, the EU has funded the SGLC/MS project seeking to develop new ways to detect steroid use in athletes. Upon ingestion, anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) are metabolised in two stages. These stages, termed phase I and phase II, result in specific chemical entities which can subsequently be found in urine. Project partners concentrated on developing new methods for the detection of these chemical entities, known as glucuronides, in urine samples. Glucuronides are phase II AAS metabolites. In spite of the scientific advances relating to the new methods, the lack of appropriate reference material with which these methods can be validated can impede the process. The German Sport University Cologne set out to devise a new chemical process for the production of phase II AAS metabolites. The use of synthetic glucuronides facilitates analytical chemistry evaluations of other steps in the development process and is therefore key for comparison and validation purposes. These synthetic compounds and the methodology behind them can find application in a variety of other chemical settings.