British medical researchers combating heart disease can claim a significant breakthrough after growing human heart tissue from stem cells for the first time.

Their progress offers a possible solution to the problem of a shortage of donors for heart transplants. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, the replacement tissue could be used in transplants for heart disease patients within three years.

Researchers led by Magdi Yacoub, a professor of cardiac surgery at Imperial College in London, have grown tissue from stem cells in bone marrow that works in the same way as the valves in human hearts. Stem cells are immature cells that grow into various tissue.

Professor Yacoub, who has worked for a decade to overcome the problem of a shortage of donated hearts for transplant, said the work had brought the goal of growing a whole human heart closer.

“It’s an ambitious project but not impossible. If you want me to guess I’d say ten years,” he said in an interview with The Guardian.

“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."

The research team’s findings, which are not due to be published until the summer, are seen to be very encouraging, but Mark Henderson, The Times Science Editor, says it is difficult to assess the full extent of the achievement until the paper is published in full.

“It’s always difficult to tell how significant a breakthrough is until it has been tested outside the laboratory,” he says. “The big question is will it work.”

There is a shortage of replacement organs available at the moment, and though some of the functions can be reproduced by artificial systems, not all can.

Growing replacement tissue from stem cells has been a key goal for scientists. If a damaged part of the body can be replaced by tissue that is genetically matched to the patient, it cannot be rejected.

Scientists until now have grown tendons, cartilage and bladders but none of these has the complexity of organs.

World Health Organisation figures show that there were 15 million deaths from heart disease in 2005. By 2010, it is estimated that 600,000 people around the world will need replacement heart valves.

The heart valve research will be published in August in a special edition of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

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