TEDxWarwick - Charlie Price - Aquaponics - Getting More out of Less

3D-Printed Heart Could Be Beating in 10 Years An ambitious 3D-printed heart project aims to make a natural organ replacement for patients possible within a decade. But the researcher heading the effort also believes 3D-printing technology must harness the self-organizing power of biology to get the job done. The idea of a 3D-printed heart grown from a patient's own fat stem cells comes from Stuart Williams, executive and scientific director of the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute in Louisville, Ky. His lab has already begun developing the next generation of custom-built 3-D printers aimed at printing out a complete heart with all its parts -- heart muscle, blood vessels, heart valves and electrical tissue. 10 Amazing Parts Grown Outside the Body "We can print individual components of the heart, but we're building next-generation printers to build the heart from the bottom up," Williams said. "I took a step back and looked at my colleagues, and said, 'Why don’t we build it like a large airplane?'" Most Amazing Medical Breakthroughs