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Grow Your Own Heart Valves

Posted by samzenpus on from the congen-circulatory-sphincters dept.

jcr writes "Medical researchers in Britain have succeeded in growing a heart valve from adult stem cells taken from bone marrow. The research is being reported in the journal of the Royal Society today. Growing a heart value from your own cells means that tissue rejection isn't an issue."

7 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Whole heart next? by crow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So how far does this leave us from growing a whole heart? Or other organs?

    At some point, transplants from donors will be for emergencies only, and the shortages and wait lists will be a thing of the past.

    1. Re:Whole heart next? by jimstapleton · · Score: 4, Informative

      embryonic are omni-potential, instead of just pluripotential.

      Until the last two or three years (if I remember correctly, the time frame may be off), with adult stem cells, they can grow a limited set of tissues only. Even now it takes work to make adult stem cells able to differentiate into any other cells. Embryonic stemm cells however can change into anything, without any modification. They are much easier to work with, and as of a couple of years ago they were the only option.

      I can't remember if they can now make adult stem cells omni-potential, or just increase their potential to add just a few more cell types.

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  2. Preventing Rejection by pscottdv · · Score: 5, Funny

    Growing a heart value from your own cells means that tissue rejection isn't an issue

    What slashdotters need is a way to grow a girlfriend from their own cells.

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  3. Tissue Rejection Not an Issue by slughead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Tissue rejection isn't an issue with heart valves (one of the few tissues where it's not a problem).

    The problem with heart valves is that if you replace one with, say, a pig valve, it won't grow. For adults, this is not a problem, but for kids, it means they'll have to have a replacement in a few years as their heart literally grows out of the valve(s).

    This new grow-your-own approach would probably be best for children. For adults, however, heart valve replacement is actually fairly routine and requires no anti-rejection drugs afterwards.

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    1. Re:Tissue Rejection Not an Issue by ambulatorybird · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've had a valve replacement myself, and I believe there are two problems: (1) pig valve: those are basically like leather, and they wear out after 5 years, requiring replacement even in adults. And open heart surgery isn't normally something one wants to have on a regular basis. (2) artificial valve: blood clots form on them, requiring the patient to take anticoagulant drugs for the rest of his life.

  4. Being reported in theJournal of the Royal Society? by jimicus · · Score: 4, Funny

    If it's being reported in a proper journal, do we have a link to the journal itself rather than something from the Daily Hysteria?

    The Daily Mail is famous for blowing medical reports out of all proportion - they "cure cancer" an average of 2 or 3 times a year.

  5. Re:php by Retric · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, ignoring the fact that a strong push into embryonic stem cell research would have resulted in zero additional baby deaths you assuming we would be in the same place today? Ethics aside we are probably in a worse place today than we would be without embryonic stem cell research. Over time millions of people may die because we are just a little behind where we could be. However, we will never know what could have been...

    Thanks.

    PS: The point of research is to find out how to do things. It was unlikely we would ever use embrionic stem cells as "standard" treatment but we could have learned a lot about how cells work much sooner.