A team of University of New South Wales researchers have unveiled a small and flexible device for 3d-printing living cells onto internal organs. The experimental robot named F3DB could, according to the UNSW Sydney newsroom, “potentially be used as an all-in-one endoscopic surgical tool”.
The UNSW Medical Robotics Lab team to pioneer this device is led by Dr. Thanh Nho Do and include among others Mai Thanh Thai, Dr. Hoang-Phuong Phan, and Professors Nigel Lovell and Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina. The device was demonstrated inside an artifical colon and on a pig’s intestine.
The technology isn’t yet commercially viable, but potentially within 5-7 years it could. You can access videos of F3DB in action via the UNSW Sydney newsroom.
Wow—3d-printing inside a human body. Not just within my lifetime, but plausibly in less than 10 years. Makes the various 3d-printed cultivated foods that are in development (e.g. fish fillets) sound like child’s play.
I’m flabbergasted.
Image: screencap from F3DB all-in-one endoscopic surgical tool by UNWS Community on YouTube
Co-Geeking 
Now, if they could just get the flying car figured out. 🙂
Seriously though this is very interesting and SF worthy.
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Ha! 😀
It is, indeed. I do wonder, however, whether they might’ve jumped the gun with the announcement, i.e. whether the technology actually is that mature already, but that remains to be seen.
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This really staggers me. I never even imagined that this was something anyone would be trying to do.
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