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Anita Kunz for The New York Times
The Lab Animal
By MICHAEL SOKOLOVE
Published: January 18, 2004
n a brisk day last month, I was led through a warren of red brick buildings on the campus of the
University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia and then up to a fifth-floor molecular physiology
laboratory. I had come to visit some mice -- and to get a peek at the future of sport.
I had heard about these mice, heard them called ''mighty mice,'' but I was still shocked at the
sight of them. There they were in several small cages, grouped with normal mice, all of them
nibbling on mouse chow pellets. The mighty mice looked like a different animal. They were built like
cattle, with thick necks and big haunches. They belonged in some kind of mouse rodeo.
The Penn researchers have used gene therapy on these mice to produce increased levels of IGF-1, or
insulinlike growth factor-1, a protein that promotes muscle growth and repair. They have done this
with mice before birth and with mice at four weeks of age. A result has been a sort of rodent
fountain of youth. The mice show greater than normal muscle size and strength and do not lose it as
they age. Rats altered in the same fashion and then put into physical training -- they climb little
ladders with weights strapped to their backs -- have experienced a 35 percent strength gain in the
targeted muscles and have not lost any of it ''detraining,'' as a human being will when he quits
going to the gym.
To the scientists, H. Lee Sweeney, chairman of Penn's department of physiology, and Elisabeth
Barton, an assistant professor, the bizarre musculature of their lab specimens is exciting. This
research could eventually be of immense benefit to the elderly and those with various ''muscle
wasting'' diseases.
''Our impetus, going back to 1988, was to develop a therapy to stop people from getting weak when
they get old,'' Sweeney, 50, explained. ''They fall and injure themselves. We wanted to do something
about that.''
Barton, 39, has the broad shoulders and athletic build of the competitve cyclist and triathlete she
once was. ''You see children with muscular dystrophy, and their parents are just so broken up
because it's so sad,'' she said. ''You see grandparents who can't get out of bed. These are the
people this is for.''
But the Penn team has become acutely aware of a population impatient to see its research put into
practice -- the already strong, seeking to get stronger still. Sweeney gets their e-mail messages.
One came from a high-school football coach in western Pennsylvania not long after Sweeney first
presented his findings at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. ''This coach wanted me
to treat his whole team,'' he said. ''I told him it was not available for humans, and it may not be
safe, and if I helped him we would all go to jail. I can only assume he didn't understand how
investigational this is. Or maybe he wasn't winning, and his job was on the line.''
Other calls and e-mail messages have come from weight lifters and bodybuilders. This kind of thing
happens often after researchers publish in even the most arcane medical and scientific journals. A
whole subculture of athletes and the coaches and chemists who are in the business of improving their
performances is eager for the latest medical advances.
Sweeney knows that what he is doing works. The remaining question, the one that will require years
of further research to answer, is how safe his methods are. But many athletes don't care about that.
They want an edge now. They want money and acclaim. They want a payoff for their years of sweat and
sacrifice, at whatever the cost.
''This was serious science, not sports science,'' Dr. Gary Wadler, a United States representative to
the World Anti-Doping Agency, said when I spoke to him about the Penn experiments. ''As soon as it
gets into any legitimate publication, bango, these people get ahold of it and want to know how they
can abuse it.''
Sweeney's research will probably be appropriated before it is ever put to its intended medical
purpose. Someone will use it to build a better sprinter or shot-putter.
. . .