To gain an unfair advantage over competitors, some athletes may resort to sophisticated performance-enhancing drugs that are marketed as “undetectable” in drug tests. However, recent PCC-funded research may soon put the brakes on this behavior with the introduction of methods for anti-doping testing that can detect designer steroids that were previously very difficult or impossible to detect, as well as the development of a database that will help anti-doping laboratories identify novel theoretical steroids that athletes could try to use in the future.

Dr. Christopher Chouinard, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Clemson University, is using a technique called ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS) to detect and differentiate similar steroid molecules to improve anti-doping analyses. This work is particularly important in an era where new designer drugs continue to be developed with the goal of evading detection by anti-doping tests and analysis procedures.