Ctrl + P: Organs

Dear Impossible Readers,

This is the first post in the How does your future look? series.

Imagine not having to wait years for an organ transplant. What if we could print a new heart, kidney, or liver using your own cells? The organ printing industry can change medicine forever.

Using your own cells significantly reduces the risk of transplant rejection, because your immune system is unlikely to attack tissue it recognises as your own. This is an advantage of organ printing over traditional transplants. Plus, printed organs could end transplant waiting lists.

What is possible today? Scientists have already printed simple tissues like skin, cartilage, and even parts of organs for lab testing. Synthetic implants such as mechanical joints and heart valves are common and donor-free, but they lack the ability to grow, heal, or adapt like living tissue, a key limitation organ printing aims to overcome. However, before printed organs become reality, scientists must overcome some big hurdles:

• Building tiny blood vessels (vascularisation) to keep organs alive
• Creating better bioinks* to keep cells healthy
• Making printing fast, affordable, and reliable for widespread use

When these hurdles are overcome, printing organs might become as commonplace as printing a photo, saving millions of lives.

While organ printing holds incredible promise for the future, remember that maintaining a healthy lifestyle today is still the best way to keep your body strong and thriving.

If organ printing excites you as much as it excites me, let us explore this future together!

See you at the next post,
Yours Possibly

*Bioink is a gel-like substance that contains living cells and is used in 3D bioprinters to build tissues or organs layer by layer.

How to 3D print human tissue – Taneka Jones (TED-Ed)

Further Reading

Cleveland Clinic, n.d. Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD): an overview in bone marrow transplant.[Accessed 5 Aug. 2025].
Ding, Z., Tang, N., Huang, J., Cao, X. & Wu, S., 2023. Global hotspots and emerging trends in 3D bioprinting research. Frontiers in Bioengineering & Biotechnology, 11:1169893.
Homan, K.A., Gupta, N., Kroll, K.T. et al., 2022. Flow-enhanced vascularization and maturation of kidney organoids in vitro. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 6, pp.210–221.
Ke, D., Niu, C. and Yang, X., 2022. Evolution of 3D bioprinting-from the perspectives of bioprinting companies. Bioprinting, 25, p.e00193.
Ozbolat, I.T. and Hospodiuk, M., 2016. Current advances and future perspectives in extrusion-based bioprinting. Biomaterials, 76, pp.321–343.
Santoni, S., Gugliandolo, S.G., Sponchioni, M., Moscatelli, D. & Colosimo, B.M., 2021. 3D bioprinting: current status and trends—a guide to the literature and industrial practice. Bio‑Design and Manufacturing, 5(1), pp. 14–42.
Stankey, P.P., Kroll, K.T., Ainscough, A.J., Reynolds, D.S., Elamine, A., Fichtenkort, B.T., Uzel, S.G.M. and Lewis, J.A., 2024. Embedding biomimetic vascular networks via coaxial sacrificial writing into functional tissue. Advanced Materials.
Vijayavenkataraman, S. (2023). 3D Bioprinting: Challenges in Commercialization and Clinical Translation. Journal of 3D Printing in Medicine, 7(2).
Vijayavenkataraman, S., Yan, W.-C., Lu, W.F., Wang, C.-H. and Fuh, J.Y.H., 2022. 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs for regenerative medicine. Biofabrication, 14(4), 043002.
World Health Organization (WHO), n.d. Transplantation. [Accessed 5 Aug. 2025].