Good coverage from CNN website. This is part of an article on CNN.com
The next frontier in 3-D printing: Human organs
By Brandon Griggs, CNN
The emerging process of 3-D printing, which uses computer-created digital models to create real-world objects, has produced everything from toys to jewelry to food.
Soon, however, 3-D printers may be spitting out something far more complex, and controversial: human organs.
Organovo, a California start-up that has been a leader in bioprinting human body parts for commercial purposes. Using cells from donated tissue or stem cells, Organovo is developing what it hopes will be authentic models of human organs, primarily livers, for drug testing.
The company has printed strips of human liver tissue in its labs, although they are still very small: four by four by one millimeter, or about one-fourth the size of a dime. Each strip takes about 45 minutes to print, and it takes another two days for the cells to grow and mature, said Organovo CEO Keith Murphy. The models can then survive for about 40 days.
Organovo has also built models of human kidneys, bone, cartilage, muscle, blood vessels and lung tissue, he said.
"Basically what it allows you to do is build tissue the way you assemble something with Legos," Murphy said. "So you can put the right cells in the right places. You can't just pour them into a mold."
"Three-D bioprinting facilities with the ability to print human organs and tissue will advance far faster than general understanding and acceptance of the ramifications of this technology," Pete Basiliere said in a recent report.
Murphy said Organovo only uses human cells in creating tissues, and doesn't see any ethical problems with what his company is doing.
"People used to worry about doing research on cadavers ... and that dissipated very quickly," he said. "We don't think there's any controversy if you're producing good data and helping people with health conditions."
Most experts, including Wake Forest's Atala, don't think we'll see complex 3-D-printed organs, suitable for transplants, for years if not decades. Instead, they believe the next step will be printing strips of tissue, or patches, that could be used to repair livers and other damaged organs.
"We are very eager to put pieces of tissue to work for surgical transplants," said Organovo's Murphy, who hopes his company will be ready to begin clinical trials within five years.
Of course, any use of 3-D-printed tissue in surgical procedures would require approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That review process could take up to a decade.
By then, the notion of a surgeon putting a 3-D-printed kidney into a patient may not seem so bizarre. Then again, this swiftly evolving technology may create new moral conundrums.
"The ethical questions are bound to be the same concerns we have seen in the past. Many major medical breakthroughs have suffered moral resistance, from organ transplants to stem cells," said Titsch of 3D Printer World.
