Irish scientists have manager to grow a fully functioning heart valve in the laboratory that has the potential to function effectively within a growing human body.

This marks a major breakthrough in heart research as it is the first time scientists have successfully made a valve that is capable of working and adapting to the growing body for prolonged periods.

According to the team at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), this has the potential to eliminate the need for children with defective valves to have to undergo repeat surgeries.

"Up to now, the problem with tissue engineered heart valves developed in the lab is that they did not shut properly. We developed a biomaterial in the lab from collagen and fibrin materials found in the body, constructed it into an anatomically correct heart valve shape and conditioned it for a number of weeks as if it was in a living heart, using a bioreactor," explained the study's principal investigator, Prof Fergal O'Brien, of the RCSI.

He said that while more investigations are needed, the team is ‘very excited about these results and the impact that this could have on the cardiovascular field and the potential to improve patients' lives'.

The Irish team worked in collaboration with a team from RWTH Aachen University in Germany and the project was funded by the Irish Heart Foundation and the European Research Council. The findings were presented at the recent RCSI Research Day 2016 in Dublin.