In 2005, 15 million people died of heart disease and by 2010, an estimated 600,000 hearts are needed to save lives. This is why scientists are hard pressed to find an answer to the growing demand for hearts ready for implanting to those who need them.

Dr. Magdi Yacoub and his team at the Harefield Hospital in London has been working on finding the answer for the demand for hearts. They've been at it for a long time now - more than ten years, actually - and recently, they've done something which brought them closer to their goal. They have successfully artificially created a human heart valve.

The human heart valve tissue made are small 3-cm wide discs constructed by Doctors Adrian Chester and Patricia Taylor. Dr. Chester and Dr. Taylor extracted stem cells from bone marrow, put them into scaffolds made of collagen, and grew them into heart valve cells. The newly constructed tissue will be implanted into pigs and sheeps to be tested. If successful, the technology of growing heart valve tissue for implanting into humans may be available in three to five years.

Dr. Yacoub is very optimistic about the work that his team has achieved so far. He believes that the common pathway of death and suffering is human heart failure. According to him, reversing this could have a big impact.