I've been aware of this for many years, but this group seems to be pulling it all together.
If something as complex as liver tissue can be modelled and manipulated within a lab relatively easily, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to extend the practice to bladder/prostate tissue and even nerve tissue (for focus on pain mechanisms).
Probably over the next few years an entire closed system modelling a huge range of factors participating in tissue function will be available.
Actually, I'm less interested in fabrication and transplantation of organs (although MIT has some neat ideas in this regard). Prob not practible for a long time yet, nor even widely desirable.
The suggestion that a tissue model could be created in a lab that effectively created the in-situ environment of a particular organ or cell type (ie. blood pressure, hormone flux, ect.) is whats exciting.
If this can be pulled off (and a number of articles I've read suggest this isn't pie in the sky) any number of scenarios could be tested well before clinical trials. And if, as the article suggests, it could be done cost effectively, it would make funding the research of less glamorous conditions such as ours much easier.
It sounds like the world of tommorow, but who would have thought we could use a retrofitted desktop ink jet printer to create blocks of living tissue? Not me, but it's already being done.
