Olympic organisers are injecting new funds into drug testing over fears that London 2012 will be the first “GM games”, with athletes using genetic doping in an attempt to improve their performance.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has increased its testing budget by $4m, of which $2m has been earmarked for laboratories that are developing a test for genetic doping. It is among a raft of anti- doping measures planned for 2012 which include:

• Increasing the number of drug tests to 5,000, so that about 50% of athletes will be subject to doping controls. In the last summer Games, in Athens in 2004, 3,000 of about 10,000 athletes were tested
• Making blood tests compulsory in all sports
• Employing a network of informants to help target competitors, coaches and sports doctors who are using drugs It is the prospect of the misuse of gene-based medical treatments that is causing most concern, however, because it is difficult to detect, as it mimics natural processes, and carries the risk of inducing serious health problems or even death when used on healthy people.

“There are people telling us that a number of athletes are looking at ways to do this,” said Patrick Schamasch, the IOC’s medical director. “But we are already working on developing tests for this. If athletes want to try gene doping, they should be very careful because by London 2012 we will not be behind them, we will be very close to them.”

Although the theory behind gene therapy has been around since the 1980s, the technology remains largely untested on humans. The concept involves inserting new genes, either attached to a virus or in a degradable tube, into the body’s cells to correct genetic flaws that cause disease.

However, scientists so far can only count a handful of successful treatments among their research, the majority of which were for the rare genetic disease called severe combined immune deficiency, which leaves children vulnerable to all germs. In other cases, patients have developed cancers and at least one person who has taken part in human trials has died.

The IOC’s scientists believe that rogue sports doctors and coaches are targeting two areas to improve an athlete’s performance genetically and are prepared to use these technologies even in their largely untested state. One route is to obtain the methodology being developed for increasing the levels of erythropoietin in the human body through genetic manipulation. The synthetic version of the naturally occuring hormone, known as EPO, is already popular with endurance athletes such as cyclists as it improves the blood’s oxygen- carrying capacity.

The other application they are understood to be seeking is to increase power and strength by directly stimulating the gene responsible for muscle growth. However, at this stage, it is thought that EPO is the gene therapy most likely to reach the sporting market first, as scientists working towards a medical use have made greatest progress in this area.

“Doping techniques tend to follow research for cures to normal medical problems, as otherwise the cost tends to make it prohibitive,” said Professor James Rupert, of the University of British Columbia, who is being funded by the Olympic movement. “This is precisely what happened in the case of steroids and synthetic EPO. These are relatively new medical developments and yet they have spread with huge speed in the sporting world.”

In the search for a successful test for gene doping, dozens of laboratories around the world have been recruited and IOC insiders say they expect the framework for a test to be ready within three years. It will be based on gene profiling, a technique used by scientists to detect normal and malignant cells in a person. It is thought that any changes to an athlete’s genetic make-up through drug use will show up in such a test.

“If the EPO gene has been inserted the person’s cells, there will be a distinct pattern of changes in gene activity compared to natural patterns,” explained Rupert. “For instance, we know at the moment that if you go to altitude to train, then you increase, naturally, the amount of EPO in your blood. But you can see clearly that this has been naturally done because all of the pathways in a cell turn on. When you do it synthetically, you only turn on one pathway. In the case of gene doping, we believe that it is ultimately possible to isolate a gene that should not be there, because its profile will be different to the others in a cell.”

While there have been rumours that winter Olympians have been experimenting with genetic doping, no concrete examples have yet come to light. The governing bodies are taking action now, however, because they have been perpetually left chasing shadows in the war on drugs in sport. While the IOC has not ruled out the prospect of a genetically modified athlete at the 2008 games in Beijing, it is clear it is focused on London 2012.

“We have no evidence that anyone has been successful yet with this type of doping but the fact that the coaches are looking for it is causing great concern to the scientific community,” said Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the IOC’s medical commission. “I think that London 2012 may well be the year where we have the first examples of gene doping and we have to be ready to detect it.”