Sports drug has its `home' in Dublin
AN Irish company, backed by associates of Deutsche Bank, owns patents to the substance found in the Michelle de Bruin urine sample taken on January 10, 1998.
Documents obtained by the Sunday Independent show that Arrowdean Limited, with registered offices at 20 Clanwilliam Terrace, Dublin 2, holds the patent rights to androstenedione sprays and tablets invented by former East German scientist, Dr Ruediger Haecker. Androstenedione, as well as anabolic steroids, oral turinabol and mestanolone, was systematically used by former GDR Olympic athletes before the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Two of Arrowdean's directors and shareholders are Irish 36-year-old businessman Aidan Edward Larkin and 29-year-old Niamh Corr. Both are directors of Larkin Corporate Consultants which is also based at 20 Clanwilliam Terrace. LCC is an agency that specialises in setting up companies, and so Larkin and Corr are unlikely to have had an active role or personal stake in the company over and above their role as company formation agents.
Deutsche Bank International, formerly known as Morgan Grenfell Investments Limited, and Morgan Nominees are also shareholders. Both are Guernsey-based subsidiaries of the Deutsche Bank and specialise in international banking, corporate finance and asset management.
The other shareholders, both based in Guernsey, also have Deutsche Bank connections and would similarly be unlikely to have had an active role or personal stake in the company. 38-year-old Michael Preston is a senior executive with Deutsche Bank and is a director of 28 other companies based in Ireland, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Panama. 51-year-old John Kenneth Blewett is a respected bank director who serves on the board of Deutsche Bank (CI), Deutsch Bank International Trust Co Limited and Morgan Grenfell Limited.
Arrowdean Limited was formed in December 1993 and originally based in the Virgin Islands, but for the past four years the private company has been based in Ireland. It describes its main activity as ``the holding of patents for pharmeceutical drugs and their subsequent licensing.''
While the Irish Patent Office has no record of receiving an application from Arrowdean, the European Patent Office granted the company two patents, both relating to androstenedione. The US Patent Office acted similarly for three patents, two of which relate to androstenedione. In each patent, Dr Ruediger Haecker and his associate, Ms Claudia Mattern, are registered as the inventors.
The Sunday Independent contacted Arrowdean several times over the past two months as well as faxing questions, but did not receive a reply. Deutsche Bank International had no comment to make.
DR Haecker was medical director and chief physician at the former GDR Research Institute for Physical Culture and Sports in Leipzig, where the research and development of androstenedione was carried out.
Professor Dr Werner Franke, who takes a keen interest in doping and who discovered GDR secret documents detailing the development of turinabol and androstenedione, has questioned the ethics of the patents, particularly one for andro spray which outlines how the substance can beat a standard doping test.
The US Department of Justice, now considering classifying androstenedione as an anabolic steroid, is also concerned that Haecker can profit from information dating from the former GDR doping regime.
Androstenedione is available over the counter in America and on the internet. Most of its producers are American-based, such as Osmo, HBB Incorporation, Kaizen, Power Shack and Ultimate Peformance Products. Many of their advertisements and websites promoting andro refer to The German patent owned by Arrowdean.
Androstenedione is banned by most sporting organisations, such as the International Olympic Committee. However, it is legal in some sports, such as baseball. Last summer, St Louis Cardinals star Mark McGwire openly admitted that taking `andro' helped him break the home-run record.
Androstendione was developed in the 1980s in the GDR after doping tests were introduced at international meetings. In their efforts to avoid detection, the athletes were instructed to take `andro' in nasal spray form because the drug got into, and out of, the blood stream quickly. It was developed under the government-funded programme, State Plan Research Theme 14.25.
Extracts from State Plan 14.25, written by Prof Dr Lehnert, a colleague of Haecker's at the FKS, detailed its effects. If a man took 50mg oral dose of andro, his testosterone level would increase by 140 to 183 per cent within 15 minutes. A dose of 100mg would see an increase of between 211 and 237 per cent in the same time.
A nasal dose of andro was also very effective. An application as small as 3.5 to 15mg would see testosterone levels increase by 34 to 97 per cent. Not only that, but within three or four days there would be a further increase of tesosterone which would be maintained for another six or seven days. It could not be detected by the sport authorities' conventional doping testing method of measuring the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone.
DR Franke is amazed that the EPO approved the patents. A patent is meant to be original, ethical and have industrial applicability. On each count, he believes, the Arrowdean patents fall down.
``The major contents of these patents were in the public domain since 1991. That year, my wife, Brigitte Berendonk, published a book, citing extracts from State Plan 14.25. That means Haecker should not have been granted a patent in 1995. A patent is meant to be new, yet the information in the Haecker patents were in the public domain before the patent application was ever filed.
``It is also the first patent that gives a description on how to outfox the standard doping testosterone:epitestosterone control test. It is incredible something so unethical could have been patented.''
Yet Wolker Winterfeld, chief executive of the patent office in Munich, can't find anything wrong. ``Our research can never be complete. How are we to know, for instance, what a newspaper in the Philippines has to say about it? And doping itself is not forbidden. You are only forbidden to gain an advantage in competition.''
The US Patent Office granted Arrowdean a patent for ``a medicament for increasing the level of testosterone'' in November 1996 and another for the nasal spray form in May 1998, but the DEA which is currently reviewing whether andro should be re-classified as an anabolic steroid and be subject to regulation is not at ease about it.
In the 1994 Dietary and Supplement Health and Education Act in America, andro was listed as one of several substances considered to be more like a food than a drug. The manufacturers of such substances do not have to prove that their products are safe or effective, provided they don't make any health claims.
And that is what some androstenedione manufacturers are doing. They are not claiming andro cures any disease. They do argue that it has other benefits, such as increasing energy, maximizing recovery from exercise and increasing libido. And to validate their claims, they constantly refer to The German Patent for androstenedione, and how 50mg of it increases testosterone by 140 to 183 per cent.
That patent is the property of Arrowdean.
