Adam’s Heart Valve Surgery Blog

Hey everybody!

I just saw this release. Looks very, very interesting for the heart valve surgery community! Cheers…. Adam

British researchers announced amazing results using stem cells to grow heart tissue, including a heart valve. Imperial College of London heart surgeon and Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub believes this breakthrough could lead to growing whole replacement hearts from stem cells.

Ultimately the goal is to grow a whole, beating human heart. Professor Yacoub told the UK Guardian newspaper that “It is an ambitious project but not impossible. If you want me to guess I’d say 10 years. But experience has shown that the progress that is happening nowadays makes it possible to achieve milestones in a shorter time. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some day sooner than we think.”

Yacoub and his team used chemicals as “physical nudges” to coax stem cells extracted from bone marrow to grow into heart valve cells. The process involves placing the cells into “scaffolds” made of collagen. But there are hurdles involved. “That work has then extended into looking at the incidence of nerves in the valve - these can cause the types of contractions and relaxations in a very specific way,” explains Adrian Chester, one of the lead scientists.

Chester and his colleague Patricia Taylor grew small 3cm-wide discs of heart valve tissue. They hope to place the tissue into animals later this year. Sheep or pigs will likely be used. They will monitor to see how well it works as part of the circulatory system.

The Guardian report suggests that this technology could be used in “patients within three to five years.” There are advantages to using real heart valves and tissue as opposed to artificial valves. “The way a living valve functions, it anticipates haemodynamic events and responds and changes its shape and size. It’s completely different from an artificial valve which will just open and shut. The heart muscle itself will appreciate something which will make it free to contract properly,” said Prof Yacoub.

Although the British researchers say this is a first, back in June of 2006 Australian scientists were able to grow heart tissue using stem cells. Professor Wayne Morrison, from Melbourne’s Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery predicted back then that their discovery will ultimately lead to the creation of human organs.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HEART VALVE SURGERY, VISIT THE VALVE SURGERY LEARNING CENTER, BY CLICKING HERE.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Medical Advances, Technology Update, Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print This Post | EMail This Post.