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The building that could bring Aussie sport to its knees

There's a fairly unassuming building located in Sydney's leafy inner north-west that could be the key to cracking Australia's biggest ever drug scandal.

News Limited reports the National Measurement Institute, a world leader in anti-doping research, currently houses more than 1000 samples from athletes dating as far back as 2007, and testing these could expose more incidents of performance enhancing drug use.

The institute, located in North Ryde, secretly stockpiled the samples from sportspeople in the AFL, NRL, Olympics and other athletes amid concerns of the rise of peptides in sport.

Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority chief Aurora Andruska said the samples were frozen to allow testing technology to catch up with the cheats.

"Yes, we were certainly concerned about the use of peptides and we were certainly taking samples and freezing them, waiting upon the development of the test," Andruska said.

The institute is one of the world leading organisations in testing for PEDs, particularly with EPO and human growth hormone technology.

And now it finally has a test for peptides, developed in Cologne, Germany.

"We have been collecting samples and freezing them in a general sense across all athletes since 2007," Andruska said. "We do have over a 1000 frozen samples and we choose to pull them out at certain times should we wish to do further testing."

However, Andruska refused to go into further detail, telling News Limited that her job was to find evidence now based on information provided to ASADA by the Australian Crime Commission.

"I have been provided with information from the ACC," she said. "I can't make any comment other than there are many threads to the investigation. There are links that probably need police involvement. And there is stuff that relates to performance-enhancing drugs and performance-enhancing drugs is the aspect of the investigation I have information on.

"This information has been gathered under (the ACC's) coercive powers. What I need to take the case forward against any individual is evidence and that is what my formal investigation is now about."