Building body parts...

[fajrdrako]

This article made me think wow. Organovo. "“Building human organs cell-by-cell was considered science fiction not that long ago." The sentence makes me think I've stepped into a Lois McMaster Bujold novel. But... I'm not sure how much they can do, as the article doesn't make real promises, just says that technology if available - "a flexible technology platform for organizations working on many different types of tissue construction and organ replacement."

In other words, my confusion is because I'm not sure what a bio-printer is or what it does. Sounds like a meld of engineering, biology and art. This article made things more clear to me:

Medical science could change forever thanks to a "special" inkjet-printer as a Japanese professor says that his machine could generate human organs. Makoto Nakamura from the Toyama University, Japan claims that the technology is very simple and it works just like a conventional inkjet printer, but instead of jetting out ink droplets, the machine will jet out hundreds, maybe thousands of cells per second. [Nakamura] is not sure that the inkjet printer-like machine can produce human organs, but it’s worth trying as the preliminary tests were encouraging.

That was in October.

Seems Science News was already talking about this five years ago.

A work in progress; but amazing all the same.