Now, this is what I’ve been waiting for (well, at least until they come up with superior technology to replace it):

As reported in the London Daily Mail, Yacoub’s team harvested the stem cells and used a chemical cocktail to coax them into becoming heart cells. Placed on a “scaffold” made of biodegradable plastic, they grew and fused together to form discs of heart valve tissue just an inch wide. As the valves developed, the scaffold decayed, leaving behind solid tissue.

Yacoub, a professor of cardiac surgery at Imperial College London, noted: “Although there has been huge progress in developing mechanical replacements, they still work mechanically and not physiologically