A research initiative at the University of California San Diego is seeking to address the shortage of donor livers by developing a 3D bioprinted, patient-specific liver. The project, led by Shaochen Chen, professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, has received up to $25.8 million in funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).
The team includes experts from engineering, liver biology, imaging, surgery, and artificial intelligence across the UC San Diego campus. Their goal is to create custom livers grown from a patient’s own cells as an alternative to traditional transplantation.
“When people think about 3D printing, they often imagine making gadgets like cellphone holders or toys, not human organs,” said Chen. “But the need for organ transplants is enormous, and 3D bioprinting is uniquely suited to address that challenge, as it allows us to personalize each organ to the patient. Our ultimate goal — the holy grail — is to help solve the organ shortage by printing real, living human organs that can restore health and quality of life.”
Chen’s lab has developed technology capable of quickly fabricating high-resolution biological tissues with complex structures in seconds rather than hours. Recently, they have integrated artificial intelligence into their process to engineer vascular networks needed for scaling up tissue samples into full-sized organs.
Through this new initiative, the team will attempt to bioprint a life-sized human liver suitable for transplantation. If successful, this could provide an on-demand source of functional liver tissue and potentially save more than 12,000 patients annually who are on transplant waiting lists in the United States. It may also reduce healthcare costs and improve outcomes for those with chronic liver disease.
“For decades, the transplant community has dreamed of a future where the fate of thousands of patients each year is no longer determined by the scarcity of donor organs,” said Gabriel Schnickel, professor of surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine and chief of Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery at UC San Diego Health. “This work has the potential to fundamentally change countless lives by moving that vision from aspiration to reality.”
Other co-investigators include David Berry, Ahmed El Kaffas, Padmini Rangamani, Bernd Schnabl and Claude Sirlin at UC San Diego School of Medicine; Rose Yu at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering; as well as industry partner Allele Biotechnology. Allele Biotechnology specializes in stem cell generation technologies necessary for producing different cell types used in bioprinting livers and operates facilities compliant with regulatory standards.
Unlike standard 3D printing methods which build objects layer by layer using plastics or metals, Chen’s technology uses digitally controlled light patterns with cell-laden materials—enabling precise recreation of microarchitecture found in living tissues such as blood vessels.
In previous work dating back two decades—including a milestone in 2016 when lifelike human liver tissue models were printed—Chen’s team demonstrated their approach could produce small but functionally accurate tissues derived from induced pluripotent stem cells unique to each patient.
The team spun out Allegro 3D (now Cellink) as a startup company aimed at commercializing their platform beyond academic settings.
“UC San Diego is uniquely positioned to lead this kind of work,” Chen said. “We have a top-ten engineering school and a world-class medical school right across campus. We have a highly collaborative culture which makes it easy to bring engineers, clinicians and biologists together to tackle a problem of this scale.”
Funding comes through ARPA-H’s Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue (PRINT) program under Award Number D25AC00432-00 over five years. The program is managed by Ryan Spitler at ARPA-H.
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