'In 10 years we will be able to grow a heart'
Pastor Dale Morgan
'In 10 years we will be able to grow a heart'*
By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:55am BST 03/04/2007
Thousands of people with heart disease could have new, healthy organs
grown in laboratories within 10 years.
In 2003 almost 10,000 people needed surgery to replace heart valves with
artificial ones
The breakthrough was a significant step on the way to growing whole new
organs, including hearts
A team of British scientists has succeeded in making stem cells develop
into simple tissue structures that work like human heart valves.
Sir Magdi Yacoub, a leading heart surgeon at Imperial College London,
head of a team working on ways to overcome the shortage of donated
hearts for transplant, said the breakthrough was a significant step on
the way to growing whole new organs. Yesterday, scientists welcomed the
development but cautioned that the work was "very preliminary", and that
tests in animals were unlikely before 2010.
Asked to predict how long it would be before researchers could grow a
whole, beating heart, Sir Magdi said: "It is an ambitious project but
not impossible. If you want me to guess I'd say 10 years."
The human heart has four valves designed to ensure blood flows in only
one direction through the heart.
Heart valve disease, which can be either inherited or acquired, occurs
either when the valve leaks, allowing a backwards flow of blood, or when
it will not open fully, impeding the flow of blood.
In 2003 almost 10,000 people needed surgery to replace heart valves with
artificial ones made of plastic or metal.
While artificial valves do save lives, children need to have them
replaced as they grow and patients must take drugs for the rest of their
lives to prevent complications.
A patient who had heart tissue grown from their own stem cells should
not need to take drugs to avoid the body rejecting it. Valves grown from
a patient's own cells should mean that he or she need not take drugs to
stop the body rejecting it.
Sir Magdi's team, based at Harefield Hospital in west London, extracted
adult stem cells from bone marrow, cultivated them into heart value
cells and put them on collagen scaffolds where they grew into discs of
heart valve tissue an inch wide.
At present the engineered tissue is not strong enough to withstand the
strains of circulation and do not contain vital nerves.
Dr Adrian Chester, one of the leading researchers in the team, predicted
that it would be three years before they produced valve tissue strong
enough to test in animals.
Dr Chester said: "We are attempting to grow a valve that will be
functional in adults and children and will be made entirely of living
-tissue.
"We are trying to make sure we have as many characteristics in the
tissue as accurate as we can before we do animal tests. Realistically
that will take us maybe three years."
Dr Stephen Minger, a leading stem cell expert at London's King's
College, said: "If the valves they've engineered prove successful in
experimental animals, this could open the door to generating complex
tissues from stem cells for a wide variety of clinical application.
"But, as they stress, this is very preliminary work and the direct
translation to human is still some way off in the future."
Heart disease is the UK's biggest killer. More than 200,000 people died
from heart disease and strokes in 2004.
Dr Chester said that ultimately the work could mean that some patients
might be able to avoid a heart transplant.