Patients may soon be able to grow their own heart valves and muscles for transplants in the next few years, according to The Times and The Guardian.

British research team has grown a heart valve from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials prove successful later this year, the procedure may replace human donors for hundreds of thousands of people.

Leading heart surgeon, Sir Magdi Yacoub, has worked on ways to overcome the problem of donor shortages for more than ten years. Now he and his team at the heart science centre at Harefield hospital believe tissue engineering may provide the solution.

The team used chemical and physical nudges to encourage stem cells extracted from bone marrow to grow into heart valve cells. These cells were then placed into scaffolds made of collagen, which grew into 3cm wide discs of heart valve tissue.

Professor Yacoub told The Times “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 a person’s own stem cells to grow replacement valves would create a genetic match, so there would not be an immune response and patients should not require a lifetime of drugs to prevent complications. However, the patient might have to wait six weeks for the replacement valve to grow.

The development has brought science ever closer to the ultimate goal of growing entire replacement hearts. Professor Yacoub told The Guardian: "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."