Better living through chemistry

As the recent A-Rod doping debacle illustrates, today’s professional sports world is constantly dogged by allegations regarding illegal and banned substances. With reputations, eligibility and health on the line, there is a growing need for precision testing with trusted accuracy to uncover the guilty and exonerate the falsely accused.

One of the most trusted drug testing labs in the country is located in Middle Tennessee. Since 1990, Nashville-based Aegis Sciences Corp. has designed and implemented test programs for numerous sports organizations, such as the Major League Baseball Players Association and NASCAR as well as many collegiate and high school programs. The company is able to test for more than 3,000 medications that can be used to enhance athletic performance.

Operating out of its main location in MetroCenter, Aegis staff of 130 — which is anchored by six PhDs — has leveraged that business beyond the world of sports and entertainment. The same toxicology procedures that track illegal substances in the top talent of elite athletic programs can be used in workplace testing, pain management and postmortem death analysis.

And while the recession is stinging Aegis’ pre-employment screening business, founder and CEO Dr. David Black expects his company — which has quintupled its payroll in three years — will grow more than 40 percent this year, which will take revenues north of $33 million.

All of Aegis’ testing springs from the research it conducts into new drugs and the creative ways athletes avoid detection. It’s a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.

“We kind of consider this the game within the game with regards to sports,” said Black. “They do one thing; we figure it out. They do something else; we figure it out. We're always going to have to respond to what they do and they are very clever.”

Because doctors and pharmacologists often aid athletes as they seek to evade detection or try new substances, testers are normally a step behind dopers. Aegis keeps up with developments in the sporting circles by monitoring what products are being sold online and what people are saying on Web sites. The company also receives first-hand accounts from coaches and trainers in the field.

Once Aegis becomes aware of a new drug or doping method, Black said it takes the company anywhere between 12 weeks and six months and $30,000 to $100,000 to develop a new detection method.

Aegis' broad sports testing platform has proven to be the perfect springboard to develop other services that use precise testing but for a smaller sample of substances. The fastest-growing business segment is pain management, in which it contracts with doctors. The service uses the company's toxicology procedures to test patients being prescribed medications to see if they are in fact taking their dosage and whether they are consuming other substances that might complicate the treatment.

“The drug monitoring component part of the practice is very new, but it does appear it's becoming more accepted and standard as a condition of being treated by pain management because the risk of diversion of the drug to the street is so high,” Black said.

Workplace drug testing has in the past proven to be another popular service offered by Aegis, especially since the statistics on the financial cost of employee drug use have been more clearly identified. According the U.S. Department of Labor, drug use in the workplace costs employers more than $75 billion annually.

“It's lost time of productivity, it's theft, it's excessive access to the health care system, it's absenteeism,” Black said.

Workplace volumes down, but work still vital

Considering it costs employers between $50 and $60 per employee to test, companies like Aegis can offer considerable long-term savings.

“Especially from a pre-employment standpoint, it really helps us make sure we're getting the right teammates,” said Roger Smith, director of human resources at Bridgestone Firestone, which has used Aegis for 10 years. The company contracts for pre-employment, post-accident, random and reasonable-suspicion testing. “When you look at the amount of people we hire here, and the fact that we have 50,000 people throughout the Americas, that's a pretty good cost avoidance.”

Other local organizations that use Aegis for workplace testing include LifePoint Hospitals, LifeWay and Metro government.

But with hiring activity all but frozen in today’s economy, that business is off 40 percent. However, Black said every other segment of the company is booming.

“We will grow this year a minimum of 43 percent,” Black said. “We think it may be greater than that. In a down economy, we feel like we'll do very well.”

As Black explained, Aegis' business is not a reflection of the general market trend.

“We say we're almost an economy-proof business,” he said. “In good times, people party hardy. And in bad times, they drown their sorrows.”