It might be a matter of years, not decades, before bio-printed replacement organs are a reality. Are you ready for the era of the acceleration of science?
— Jim Carroll
The opportunity
Address the critical shortage of donor organs, create patient-specific tissues that reduce rejection risk, and provide new solutions for organ failure and tissue damage.
From “Monday Mining: Bio-Printed Organs: Checking the Timeline” (August 2026)
There is exactly one clinical trial approved for human transplantation as of 2026 — 3DBio Therapeutics, building ear prosthetics from a patient’s own cells. That’s real, but it’s cartilage, not an organ. United Therapeutics has 3D printed a human lung scaffold with 4,000 kilometers of capillaries and 200 million alveoli that works in animal models — a genuine step forward, aiming for human trials in the next few years.
But the expert consensus in 2026 is that complex, life-sized printed organs are still 20 to 30 years out, not the ‘years, not decades’ I predicted.
Then vs. now: Overoptimistic on the timeline. Simple tissue is arriving on schedule. Full organs are not — and I should have said so in 2018.
From “The BIG Future: “Regenerative Medicine” and a New Era of Healthcare Science” (January 2023)
We are quickly learning how to grow replacement tissues and organs in a lab, and how to stimulate the body’s own repair mechanisms to deal with disease or accident-driven tissue damage . The acceleration of regenerative medicine is perhaps the most exciting, and most staggering of all trends in the world of healthcare science - leading us to a world that involves significant new opportunities to deal with disease, aging, accidents, and more!
Tel Aviv University(TAU) researchers say “ this ability is almost inconceivable from a morphological point of view , and as far as we know it has almost no equal in nature. ” In the future, they said, these findings could contribute to new developments in the field of regenerative medicine, as a basis for nerve restoration and the development of synthetic tissues.
In the future, these findings may contribute to new developments in the field of regenerative medicine, as a basis for nerve restoration and the development of synthetic tissues.”
From “Daily Inspiration: “It might be a matter of years, not decades, before bio-printed replacement organs are a reality. Are you ready for the era of the acceleration of science?”” (May 2018)
This is a still picture grabbed from the video of my keynote yesterday - Sunday, weekend work! - in Edmonton, Canada, for a group of optometrists and eyecare professionals. The quote was used on stage for this group, as well as for a group of dentists in Toronto, Ontario, just a few weeks earlier. I really need to write a blog post around the trends I covered for both groups, but for now, the fact is this: research into the concept of 3D printing body parts - replacement organs, lenses, and molars - using live tissue instead of inert materials, might be here sooner that we think. At least, that is the crazy science-fiction like idea behind the quote - but as everyone is learning, the crazy is becoming faster sooner.
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Monday Mining: Bio-Printed Organs: Checking the Timeline
The BIG Future: “Regenerative Medicine” and a New Era of Healthcare Science
Daily Inspiration: “It might be a matter of years, not decades, before bio-printed replacement organs are a reality. Are you ready for the era of the acceleration of science?”