Bioprinting is a new area of research and engineering that involves printing devices that deposit biological material. The long-term goal is that the technology could be used to create replacement organs or even entire organisms from raw biological materials.
Cardiovascular scientists have announced that it will be possible to 3D print a whole heart from the patients’ own cells within a decade. A bioengineer has been quoted saying that the heart is one of the easiest organs to bioprint. In fact, scientists have already bioengineered a coronary artery and printed the smallest blood vessels in the heart used in microcirculation.