In breakthrough, human heart valve grown from stem cells

LONDON: A British research team led by the world's leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time.

If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years.

Magdi Yacoub, a professor of cardiac surgery at Imperial College London, has worked on ways to tackle the shortage of donated hearts for transplant for more than a decade. His team at the heart science center at Harefield hospital have grown tissue that works in the same way as the valves in human hearts, a significant step toward the goal of growing whole replacement hearts from stem cells.