Monday Mining: Bio-Printed Organs: Checking the Timeline

“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?” – Futurist Jim Carroll

From the vault: May 7, 2018, I wrote this one. Eight years on, this is the one I’ll admit I got ahead of myself on!

Bionic eyes. Corneal implants grown for a particular patients DNA. The acceleration of human-to-computer interface technology the impact that will have on vision opportunities. I was invited in to talk to several hundred individuals working in the optometric and eyecare industry, for a futuristic look at the trends that would define their future.

So where are we?

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.

In fact, less than 5% of lab innovations in this field have made it to human trials at all.

I blew this prediction!

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.