A research team at the University of California San Diego is leading a project aimed at addressing the shortage of liver transplants in the United States. The initiative, funded by up to $25.8 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), seeks to develop fully functional, patient-specific 3D bioprinted livers.
The project is led by Shaochen Chen, a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Chen’s team includes specialists from various fields such as engineering, liver biology, imaging, surgery, and artificial intelligence. Their goal is to create livers grown from a patient’s own cells that could be used as an alternative to traditional transplantation methods.
“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 laboratory has spent more than twenty years advancing 3D bioprinting technology. They have developed techniques capable of quickly fabricating high-resolution biological tissues with complex structures. Recently, they have incorporated artificial intelligence into their process to design sophisticated vascular networks within tissues—a crucial step toward creating full-sized organs.
The new ARPA-H-supported initiative aims to apply these advancements toward producing a transplantable human liver. If successful, this could offer an on-demand source of functional liver tissue for patients waiting for transplants in the U.S., where over 12,000 individuals are currently on waiting lists.
“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 from UC San Diego School of Medicine; Rose Yu from UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering; and industry partner Allele Biotechnology led by CEO Jiwu Wang. Allele Biotechnology brings expertise in stem cell generation technologies and operates facilities for clinical-grade cell manufacturing.
Unlike conventional 3D printing methods that build objects layer-by-layer using physical materials like plastics or metals, Chen’s technology uses digitally controlled light patterns to solidify materials containing living cells—known as bioinks—layer by layer. This approach enables precise recreation of microstructures found in natural tissues.
In 2016, Chen’s lab demonstrated that their technology could produce small but lifelike human liver tissue models derived from induced pluripotent stem cells specific to individual patients—a development expected to reduce immune rejection risks.
Building on this achievement led them to launch Allegro 3D (now Cellink), further developing their system into an industrial-scale printer capable of producing larger tissue structures suitable for medical applications outside laboratory 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 for up to five years; Ryan Spitler serves as Program Manager for PRINT at ARPA-H. The agency notes that content related to this project reflects only its authors’ views.
