Heart valves and muscles made from a patient’s own cells could be a reality within three to five years.

The idea is to take a patient’s cells, or those from a compatible donor, and persuade them to grow into new heart components that could then be used instead of transplants.

Tissue engineering has been progressing fast. Now Magdi Yacoub of Harefield Hospital and colleagues believe the technique is close to making an impact. Professor Yacoub, a leading transplant surgeon, said: “Currently people suffering from heart valve disease can be treated with artificial replacement valves – they do the job and save people’s lives but they are far from perfect. Although there has been huge progress in developing mechanical replacements, they still work mechanically and not physiologically – they cannot match the elegant sophisticated functions of living tissues.”

Using stem cells and tissue engineering, bioengineers could repair faulty valves or heart muscle damaged by a heart attack, providing a “like for like” match that would grow and repair in the same way as heart tissue.

Using a patient’s own stem cells would produce material that was genetically identical to its recipient and so would not produce an immune response or need immunosuppressive drugs. However, it might take six weeks to grow such replacements before the patient could be treated.

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