3D-printed organs may soon be a reality. ‘Looking ahead, we’ll not need donor hearts’
Last year, in San Antonio, Texas, Dr. Arturo Bonilla carefully implanted an outer ear on a 20-year-old woman born without one. The ear on the woman’s right side, had been constructed in the size and shape of her left. For Bonilla, a pediatric microtia surgeon (a doctor who treats birth defects of the ear) for more than 25 years and a recognized expert in the field, such a procedure would normally be routine. But this case had a twist: For the first time, the ear he was implanting was the product of a 3D bioprinter using the woman’s own cartilage cells. The implant procedure, Bonilla told me, was “very uneventful.” It is a vast understatement, all things considered. From the realm of near-fiction to the germ of an idea to actual science, 3D bioprinting is advancing across all aspects of medical research—and, now, practice. The pace is slow, and target dates for some of the most ambitious 3D plans are decades off. But progress is real. “I think that in 10 years we will have organs ...