Thesis title: Cellular, protein, molecular markers for the detection of ultimate generation doping strategies
Despite the continuous effort of the anti-doping authorities to improve analytical techniques to tackle the problem of cheating athletes in sports, innovative doping strategies are being constantly developed and enhanced. Thus, there is the necessity to strengthen the current enforced analytical methods and develop further strategies of detection for ultimate generation doping methods. The identification of suitable indirect biomarkers is one of the main topics of anti-doping research. In this thesis, novel approaches have been implemented to comply with the new requirements of the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA), to simplify, standardize the current operating protocols, and reduce the risk of misinterpreting the analytical findings. Multi-parametric approaches based on the measurement of various indirect biomarkers were proposed to assess the illicit recourse to prohibited substances and methods. More specifically, our research focused on i) the longitudinal monitoring of myostatin and other myostatin-induced myokines as a suitable strategy to assess myostatin inhibition for doping purposes; ii) the analysis of the modifications that occur to red blood cells (RBC) during the storage period, so-called “RBC storage lesions”, as a solid and reproducible strategy for the identification of autologous transfused samples; iii) brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its precursor pro-BDNF baseline levels to assess the recourse to transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for doping purposes; iv) the alteration on kynurenine and serotonin pathways metabolites following the controlled administration of tyrosol, due to the relevance of these pathways for tDCS detection in the antidoping context.