ARPA-H Backs On-Demand Organ Printing With $176M Push

Organ Shortages and the Case for On-Demand Bioprinting

Organ donations are a key medical tool keeping millions of people alive, with almost 50,000 transplants performed yearly in just the USA. Still, the supply of organs is insufficient to satisfy demand, with 13 people dying every day in the USA while waiting for an organ transplant, and over 103,000 people on the national waiting list.

This shortage can partially be alleviated by more organ donations, which remain a vital policy focus. However, finding a compatible donor is often as much of a challenge as the overall shortage of donors.

Ideally, the ability to “produce” any organ on demand would offer a superior solution. But it would still not remove the problem of compatibility, or the need to take anti-rejection drugs, which weaken the immune system. Transplanted organs also tend to have a shorter lifespan than the original.

“Even when patients do get a transplant, organs usually last only 15-23 years and require a lifetime of drugs to prevent rejection, which are expensive and can cause serious health problems.”

The current situation also leads to stark inequality in outcomes. Because of factors like geographic distance and the need for specific blood type matches, rural populations and minority groups face significantly higher hurdles. The data on these disparities is concrete:

• Waiting List Representation: While Black Americans make up approximately 28% of the transplant waiting list, they received only about 23% of transplants in 2024.
• Transplant Disparity: Conversely, White Americans comprised roughly 39% of the waiting list but received nearly 49% of all transplants.
• Donor Availability: Biological matching often requires donors of similar ethnic backgrounds, yet donation rates vary widely. White individuals accounted for roughly 67% of all donors in 2024, compared to approximately 13% for Black and 15% for Hispanic individuals.

On-demand organs that could be implanted in any patient regardless of demographics would be a massive equalizer in this system.

This is the exact goal of a series of awards granted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ARPA-H was created in 2022 with a $1 billion congressional appropriation and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

“Developing universally matched organs has never been done before in the history of transplantation. Printing a precisely matched, functional human organ will fundamentally change what is possible in transplant medicine and will save countless lives.”

– Alicia Jackson, Ph.D., ARPA-H Director

Its Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue (PRINT) program is looking to encourage the development of organ printing technology that does not require immunosuppressive drugs.

“The goal is to use either a patient’s own cells or cells from a biobank to quickly – within hours – produce immune-matched replacement organs, such as kidneys, hearts, and livers.”

What Is 3D Bioprinting and Why Organs Are Hard

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is now a relatively familiar technology. It started with plastic filaments and is now becoming feasible with many materials, including metals. The next frontier is printing organic tissues.

By adding cells individually, in complex 3D layouts and multiple layers, 3D bioprinting can replicate the exact shape and texture organs require. One of the first successful proofs-of-concept was done at Wake Forest University in 2016, with a functional and viable 3D-printed ear. (You can read more about bioprinting on this Wake Forest University page, one of the beneficiaries of the ARPA-H funding.)

The bioprinting market, for now mostly limited to niche use cases and academic research, is already a $2.91B market (in 2025) and is expected to grow by 12.54% CAGR until 2034.

The idea is to either produce organs from a patient’s own cells, removing all risk of immune reaction, or to use cells from a biobank modified to achieve the same result. The technology has recently made good progress, including using ultrasound for guided bioprinting, bioprinting pancreas islets for diabetes treatment, and creating 3D printed skin for lab experiments and skin grafts.

ARPA-H’s PRINT Program Explained

Overview

The goal of the program is to achieve what has been so far an elusive target: 3D print a human-sized organ, with all the cells, blood vessels, and tissue materials that allow it to function as a heart, filter blood and produce urine as a kidney, and uphold metabolism as a liver.

A success of the program, for now focused on these 3 key organs, could later be expanded to the pancreas and lungs. The PRINT program total is up to $176.8 million over 5 years. Details and timing of the exact payment will depend on each of the selected research teams meeting aggressive and accelerated milestones.

The program was launched in 2024, requiring proposals from researchers focused on three technical areas:

• Generate all necessary organ cell types from the best cell source(s).
• Large-scale manufacturing of organ cell types.
• Organ biofabrication and IND-enabling in vivo testing.

In January 2026, it announced the selected research teams for the program.

Who Received ARPA-H PRINT Funding

Carnegie Mellon University

The Pittsburgh-based university aims to create a cost-effective immune-silent bioprinted liver that is ready for first-in-human trials in five years, under the project named LIVE, or Liver Immunocompetent Volumetric Engineering.

It will receive $28.5M from ARPA-H for this project.

The engineered livers will be initially produced to address acute liver failure, with the long-term goal of addressing all liver failure.

“The liver we are creating would last for about two to four weeks. It would give patients time for their own liver to regenerate, and then, they would not need a liver transplant, freeing up those livers for other patients.”

– Adam Feinberg, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon

Wake Forest University

The university located in Winston-Salem, N.C., will seek to produce clinical-grade vascularized renal tissue to augment renal function in patients suffering from kidney disease.

This project will work in parallel with both preclinical trials and the development of a plan for commercialization. This way, the technique should not only perform well medically, but also be viable from an economic point of view, providing “a cost-efficient solution to the nation’s growing donor organ shortage.”

Wyss Institute

The Harvard research institute, located in Boston, will develop universal, clinical-scale liver tissue from adult stem cells.

The Lewis lab has created another method, called SWIFT (sacrificial writing into functional tissue), in which hundreds of thousands of stem-cell-derived aggregates are concentrated into a dense, living matrix of organ-building blocks (OBBs) that contains about 200 million cells per milliliter.

With a focus on adequate vascularization (blood vessel development), the research team hopes their technology can benefit all sorts of patients with liver dysfunction.

University of California, San Diego

The university will print livers using stem cells produced by local firm Allele Biotechnology. It will receive around $25M from ARPA-H for this task.

The liver will be tailored to an individual’s unique anatomy and physiology, without the need for donor tissue or immunosuppressants. This should ideally ensure long-term functionality and integration of the 3D-printed organs.

“The difference between us and others who do extrusion printing is that we print the whole page at the same time, and that’s truly 10,000 times faster than what they do.”

– Shaochen Chen, Professor in the university’s Jacobs School of Engineering

Human trials are expected in five years if everything goes according to plan.

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

The Dallas-based university will receive nearly $25M for the development of a transplantation-ready liver capable of providing full function in patients with liver failure. The program is called Vascularized Immunocompetent Tissue as an Alternative Liver (VITAL).

“UTSW has a robust solid organ transplant program that recently celebrated its 1,000th liver transplant. This project represents a bold step toward advancing patient care through biomedical innovation. It unites engineers, clinicians, and scientists to transform discovery into real-world solutions, shaping a future where functional organ printing becomes reality.”

– Dr. Samuel Achilefu, Ph.D., Inaugural Chair of Biomedical Engineering

This means not only a functional organ metabolically, but also reconnecting blood vessels to restore blood flow and establishing a bile duct system for fluid transport.

Why ARPA-H Could Accelerate Organ Printing Timelines

3D-printing organs has been a trendy idea that is only slowly making its way into practical clinical applications. This is because recreating something as complex as organs—made of hundreds of billions of cells with many complex sub-types—requires mastering details that are often poorly understood.

Designing an organ from scratch is akin to assembling a jet engine from known parts without understanding exactly how the engine works. Luckily, living cells, especially stem cells, are designed to self-organize into a full organ, helping the researchers.

The sudden influx of money by ARPA-H into this topic should help accelerate the timeline to start seeing printable organs that are potentially superior to the usual donated organs.

Investing in 3D Bioprinting and Regenerative Medicine

United Therapeutics

United Therapeutics has a long history as a pioneer in bioprinting, having notably established a partnership with 3D Systems Corporation (DDD +8.2%) on the topic as far back as 2017.

The company is focused on rare diseases (interstitial lung disease – ILD, Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension – PAH, and neuroblastoma) and end-stage lung diseases.

This also means that while 3D bioprinting is important for the future of the company, it is also a traditional biotech company at the same time. This gives the company more than $1.6B in TTM (Trailing Twelve Months) operating cash flow and a solid cash reserve to keep financing innovation without risking excessive dilution of existing shareholders.

The company’s revenues have steadily risen in the 2020s, in large part thanks to its growing sales from Tyvaso, the most prescribed U.S. prostacyclin (for the treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension – PAH), which still grew 10% year-to-year in 2025.

In bioprinting, the company is still at the R&D stage, with its most advanced product for lung transplant, with alternative kidney and liver also in development.

Outside of organs, the company’s R&D schedule is mostly focused on expanding Tyvaso’s applications to increase its sales.

So, as 3D printing is getting a lot more attention and research budget, companies like United Therapeutics, with a head start in the field and already starting clinical trials, might have a clear advantage in commercializing an early form of the technology, likely followed by several decades of improvement (and the associated renewed or new patents).

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