Section:GDN BE PaGe:1 Edition Date:070402 Edition:04 Zone:

Sent at 1/4/2007 23:47

Fun factor The lost art of letting our hair down

cYanmaGentaYellowblack

Living in a box Ikea homes hit the UK G2 Page 23

English rugby rampage French falter in Europe Sport Page 12

G2 Page 4 £0.70 Monday 02.04.07 Published in London and Manchester guardian.co.uk

British team grows human heart valve from stem cells

Pensions row: CBI denies backing Brown’s cuts

Tissue for transplants could be available within three years if trials are successful

Phillip Inman

Alok Jha Science correspondent

12A

A British research team led by the world’s leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years. Sir Magdi Yacoub, a professor of cardiac surgery at Imperial College London, has worked on ways to tackle the shortage of donated hearts for transplant for more than a decade. His team at the heart science centre at Harefield hospital have grown tissue that works in the same way as the valves in human hearts, a significant step towards the goal of growing whole replacement hearts from stem cells. According to the World Health Organisation, 15 million people died of cardiovascular disease in 2005; by 2010, it is estimated that 600,000 people around the world will need replacement heart valves. “You can see the common pathway of death and suffering is heart failure,” said Prof Yacoub. “Reversing heart failure could have a major impact.” Growing replacement tissue from stem cells is one of the principal goals of biology. If a damaged part of the body can be replaced by tissue that is genetically matched to the patient, there is no chance of rejection. So far, scientists have grown tendons, cartilages and bladders, but none of these has the complexity of organs, which are three-dimensional structures of dozens of different types of cells. To crack the problem, Prof Yacoub assembled a team of physicists, biologists, engineers, pharmacologists, cellular scientists and clinicians. Their task — to characterise how every bit of the heart works — has so far taken 10 years. The progress of his team and that of colleagues around the world will be published in August in a special edition of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Prof Yacoub said his team’s latest work had brought the goal of growing a whole, beating human heart closer. “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,” he said. Currently, many people suffering from heart valve disease have artificial replacement valves. Though they save lives, the artificial valves are far from perfect. They perform none of the more sophisticated functions of living tissue, children need their valves replaced as they grow, and patients need a lifetime of drugs to prevent complications after surgery. “The way a living valve functions, it anticipates haemodynamic events and responds and changes its shape and size. It’s completely different from an artificial valve which will just open and shut. The heart muscle itself will appreciate something which will make it free to contract properly,” said Prof Yacoub. Adrian Chester, one of the lead scien-

The row over the government’s pensions policy deepened yesterday as business leaders dismissed ministers’ claims that they had lobbied for Gordon Brown’s controversial tax changes in 1997. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act late on Friday showed that the chancellor was warned about his plans to remove a key tax benefit enjoyed by pension funds in his first budget. Civil servants warned that the cuts could lead to the closure of many occupational pension schemes. Mr Brown’s decision to cut tax relief on company dividends has in part led to the number of people in final salary schemes falling from 11 million in 1997 to 4 million. The revelations have led to a political outcry, with the Tory leader, David Cameron, calling for an independent inquiry. Ministers insisted at the weekend that the employers’ body, the CBI, had been in favour of the move. They said the business community had agreed that the tax break discouraged long-term investment. But the CBI director general, Richard Lambert, said: “This is a convenient bit of spin by the Treasury. There is no record of any kind that we lobbied for [cuts in tax relief], and there is no record because we objected strenuously to the policy.” He said the cut in dividend tax relief was a contributory factor in the collapse of many final salary pension schemes. Ministers were sticking to that defence yesterday. John Hutton, the work and pensions secretary, said there had been “a consensus then that these were the right changes to make”. He told ITV’s Sunday Edition: “British business was urging these changes to be made and the clear view from the Treasury, in these papers, was that these would be in the long-term best interests of British pensioners.” The official papers revealed that civil servants believed that many companies could be forced into insolvency if they attempted to meet their obligations after the tax break was withdrawn. The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, said he planned to hold a special Commons debate on the issue. “Gordon Brown should be asked to account for his actions and his subsequent denials that his decision in 1997 resulted in the current crisis in our pension system,” he said.

Sir Magdi Yacoub says his team’s work has brought the goal of growing a whole, beating, human heart closer tists at the Harefield centre, has focused on characterising the valves in the heart. “You have mediators in blood or released locally in the valve that can make parts of the valve contract and relax. That work has then extended into looking at the incidence of nerves in the valve — these can cause the types of contractions and relaxations in a very specific way.” By using chemical and physical nudges, the scientists first coaxed stem cells extracted from bone marrow to grow into heart valve cells. By placing these cells into scaffolds made of collagen, Dr Chester and his colleague Patricia Taylor then grew small 3cm-wide discs of heart valve tissue. Later this year, that tissue will be implanted into animals — probably sheep or pigs — and monitored to see how well it works as part of a circulatory system. If that trial works well, Prof Yacoub is optimistic that the replacement heart tissue, which can be grown into the shape of a human heart valve using speciallydesigned collagen scaffolds, could be used in patients within three to five years. Growing a suitably-sized piece of tissue from a patient’s own stem cells would

24≥

Healthy heart: Scientists hope valves grown from stem cells will eliminate the need for life-long drug treatment Photograph: Science Photo Library

Leader comment, page 30 ≥

National

International

Financial

Sport

Doctors scared to air abuse concerns

Catholic bishops denounce Mugabe

British pair accused of insider trading

We must get better, admits Fletcher

More than 50 paediatricians today accuse the General Medical Council of deterring doctors from speaking out in cases of suspected child abuse. In an article in a US journal the doctors say that the GMC does not understand child protection work. They claim doctors are fearful of raising concerns following the cases of David Southall and Sir Roy Meadow. Both paediatricians were disciplined over the case of Sally Clark, who was jailed for killing two of her children but freed on appeal. They argue that Professor Southall was justified in contacting police with his theories after watching a television interview with Mrs Clark’s husband.

Robert Mugabe’s government has been damned as “racist, corrupt and lawless” by Zimbabwe’s influential Catholic bishops, who had hitherto been reluctant to speak out against the regime. In a pastoral letter, the bishops denounced the leadership for its arrests, detentions, beatings and torture, and likened the struggle against Mugabe to the country’s liberation war against white rule. The Catholic bishops’ conference letter warns that Zimbabwe is heading toward a flashpoint but appealed for “peace and restraint” in protests against the government ahead of a two-day general strike called from tomorrow.

American regulators have accused a British couple of being central to an insider trading ring which made millions by buying lucrative options contracts just days ahead of takeovers, including the $45bn (£23bn) private equity buyout of Texas power company TXU. Sunil Sehgal, director of Wembley-based IT firm Transputec Computers, and his wife Seema are the first to be named in an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission into dealings in the run up to TXU’s takeover in February — the biggest yet in a series of private equity buyouts worth billions of dollars of public corporations either side of the Atlantic.

England’s cricket coach Duncan Fletcher admitted last night that his side need to remove the complacency from their game if they are to progress in the World Cup. Their lacklustre 48-run win over Ireland on Friday followed equally unimpressive victories over Kenya and Canada. With Sri Lanka next up in Antigua on Wednesday, Fletcher knows a major improvement is needed. “We got a little bit complacent at times,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure we don’t show that complacency against the better sides. We’ve got to make sure these young guys concentrate for 50 overs, not 40 overs.”

4≥

Continued on page 2 ≥

9≥ Charles Laughton was just one of the greats to grace this famous venue, which has seen its final performance

15≥

23≥

Sport, 1≥