According to Monday newspapers, British medical scientists have succeeded in growing human heart tissue from stem cells. It is a step forward in the efforts to provide a potential solution to a lack of donors for heart transplants.
The Guardian newspaper informed that if animal trials planned for the end of this year appear to be victorious, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for patients suffering from a heart disease within three years.
The group of investigators, led by Magdi Yacoub, a professor of cardiac surgery at Imperial College London, have succeeded in growing tissue from stem cells in bone marrow acting in the same way as the valves in human hearts, it said.
Stem cells are undeveloped cells growing into various tissues.
Whole heart in ten years
Yacoub, who has worked for about ten years on how to cope with a lack of donated hearts for transplant, explained that the work had made it more probable to grow a whole human heart.
"It’s an ambitious project, nevertheless not impossible. If you want me to guess, I would estimate 10 years," he was quoted as saying.
"However, experience has proven that the progress that is taking place nowadays makes it possible to achieve the goal in a shorter time.
"I wouldn’t be astonished if it was some day sooner than we expect."
There is a lack of donor organs, and although some of the functions are possible to be reproduced by artificial systems, not all of them can.
Developing replacement tissue from stem cells has been a crucial objective of researchers. If a destroyed part of the body may be replaced by tissue that is genetically matched to the patient, it can’t be rejected.
Organs more complicated
So far, the researchers have grown tendons, cartilage and bladders, however none of these has the complexity of organs.
World Health Organisation figures, The Guardian informed, demonstrate that there were fifteen million deaths of heart disease in 2005. It is estimated that by 2010, 600 000 people all over the world will require replacement heart valves.
The Guardian informed that the heart valve study is going to be published in August in a special edition of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
