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[quinnr]

I was watching an interesting documentary the other day and they showed this awesome device that I had no idea existed:

A modified inkjet printer, which instead of using ink cartridges, it was hooked up to test tubes with various cells. This printer then started printing out working 2 chamber mouse hearts.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=desktop-printer-technology-lay-down-cells

(It's from June, 2010. Sadly I couldn't find a video of it online anywhere...if you find one post a link!)

It's quite interesting how far technology involving the creation of body organs has come. There have been multiple synthetic lungs + hearts and other body parts created...but this is the most awesome form of synthetic body part creation I've seen so far.

[optimumtact]

Whoa, that is cool, It's really great to see how much of an effect technology has had on the world and how much more of an impact it can have.

[ChairmanPoo]

It was shown at TED, too. It's not yet  close to printing transplantable hearts, but it's a start. IIRC they are planning to try those with vessels and tissue patches first. Still, the beating pseudo-heart was impressive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SfRgg9botI

IIRC they are planning to try those with vessels and tissue patches first. Still, the beating pseudo-heart was impressive

Anthony Atala is a pretty cool guy. Eh runs a kickass tissue engineering facility yet he doesn't abandon his surgical practice either. Damnit, when I grow up I want to be like him. Only taller.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE2um9rOVlQ

They coop a lot with tengion

http://www.tengion.com

Other interesting corporation is organovo, which has another  approach to the same problem
www.organovo.com

There was another company which was fiddling around with tissue printers, but I don't recall which one it was.

Then there's there is recellularization, which is another promising tissue engineering approach. This was already done for part of the airways two years ago in Barcelona, and last year in London. There are several places where they are trying to do it for hearts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9hEFUpTVPA

[smigenboger]

So, do I need to worry about the state of my liver 30 years from now?

[Max White]

30 years from now you will not have a worry in the world! Bar some sort of nuke war, or global walming, or some other popular end of the world theory.

But this is a good time to be alive, as there is a chance medical care might be able to catch up to illness when we can start replacing rather then fixing.