In 2019, Israel produced a tiny heart, just about big enough to fit a rabbit. Submerged in a small cube of liquid to sustain it, the heart wasn't able to pump blood—in fact, the cherry-sized, anatomically correct heart couldn't function like a real heart at all, but its remarkable potential made it a historic invention.

This was the first 3D-printed human heart. Although the technology is still in its infancy, scientists have discovered the key to making transplantable printed organs: bioink, made up of fatty tissue from a donor mixed with collagen and proteins. The heart had the same tissue layers as a human heart, including an intricate network of miniscule blood vessels scaled to size. Scientists have been working on engineering working organs for years, from kidneys to to corneas, and the success of the first heart—an incredibly difficult organ to recreate—is a massive step for medicine.

Doctors brought bioprinting to the ISS, where scientists successfully grow tissue in zero gravity. These experiments are at the cutting edge of bioprinting, creating patches designed for specific defective organs, and are the foundation to building complex multicellular organs, like the liver. With experts in the field projecting that fully printed human tissues and organs could be transplanted in the next 10-15 years, it raises the question: will organ failure become a thing of the past?

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