Glasgow-based biotech Entourage has partnered with Premier League club Nottingham Forest on a 12-week trial to investigate whether blood proteins can flag the risk of injury.
The study is supported by Scottish Enterprise and initially involves the club’s 25-player men’s B-Team squad.
The companies describe it as the first high-frequency plasma proteomic trial of its kind involving a professional club in any sport.
Players will have blood samples analysed twice a week, allowing researchers to track thousands of proteins and build a picture of how individuals respond to training, matches, injury and recovery.
The findings will be examined alongside the club’s existing training, workload and clinical information to see whether particular patterns could indicate increased risk of non-contact soft tissue injuries.
The release cites UEFA research tracking 54 clubs across 20 European countries, which found that hamstring injuries alone accounted for one in five days lost to injury in 2021/22.
Separate research across English professional football found a median absence of 19 days for hamstring injuries.
The trial centres on proteomics, the study of proteins, and researchers will follow changes in blood markers associated with processes including inflammation and immune function.
They will also examine protein signals associated with senescent cells, sometimes called ‘zombie cells’, which have stopped dividing but remain in the body and can contribute to inflammation.
Professor Patrick Gunning, Entourage’s chief executive and co-founder, said: “One of the questions we are trying to answer is whether there are signals in the blood that could indicate an increased risk of a non-contact injury. That is something we need to investigate through the study.”
Gunning said: “If athletes and their clubs can track factors they previously could not see, and use that information to look after themselves, I think we could see a larger proportion continuing to compete professionally well into their forties.”
If the trial succeeds, Gunning believes another application could be understanding why players exposed to similar workloads need different recovery approaches.
Dimitrios Kalogiannidis, Forest’s head of medical, said: “We are deeply committed to evidence-led player care. We believe in the importance of building a more robust biological profile of each player, so we’re pleased to be taking part in this research study that could benefit Nottingham Forest and the wider game for years to come.”
The study will help develop a reference profile, or baseline, for professional footballers, building on Entourage’s existing dataset covering thousands of people aged 18 to 96.
Entourage believes the technology raises the possibility of a ‘Moneyball for biodata’, with biological information eventually complementing performance statistics when clubs assess players’ long-term availability and transfer value.
Gunning said advances in instruments and computing, particularly AI, had made protein analysis faster and less expensive.
He said: “There are already published examples of how plasma proteomics could help identify conditions including cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s and type 2 diabetes.”
Entourage is a University of Glasgow spin-out that launched with a $5 million pre-seed raise and operates its research centre at Kelvin Campus in Glasgow.
Gunning co-founded the company with Dr Taleb Sedghi and Dr Mark Lindsay.
Entourage will report its findings to Forest at the end of the study.
