Footballers freezing stem cells

Five Premiership footballers in the UK are reported to have frozen their babies' stem cells, taken from the umbilical cord at birth, for possible future use, according to reports in the UK's Sunday Times newspaper and other sources. The cells have been stored with Liverpool-based CryoGenesis International (CGI), as a kind of biological insurance policy. Thierry Henry, Arsenal striker and French international, was already known to have stored stem cells for his children's potential use in the future, but he does not intend to use them for himself. However, an unnamed footballer commented that storing cells amounted to a 'repair kit' that would be useful for injury-prone footballers and said that he has frozen his child's stem cells for his own potential future use.

Paul Griffiths, managing director of CGI, predicts that although still in the experimental stage, such procedures as injecting stem cells directly into a damaged knee, for example, have enormous potential for the high-risk professions of sportsmen and women. These footballers have added to the thousands of parents who have paid to store their babies' stem cells over the past five years.