The work behind this is the result of a huge effort, starting 20-30 years ago. Some people had given up on the promise of tissue engineering - one of my mentors suggested just over a year ago to me that the field was a poor choice to start a career in due to too many researchers and not enough progress. Its a very active field of research, and practically every university with a life sciences or bioengineering department will be doing some sort of work on it.

Thanks for posting the journal links.

We're not done yet. Most of the currently feasible organs are relatively simple in geometry and homogenety. More complex organs like the kidneys, liver, and espessially brain are probably exponentially harder to make. I personally think we'll have nanotechnologies and regenerative techniques that will leap-frog lab-grown organs before we are making more complex organs (which will be the desired approach unless, as in these cases, the organ is absent). A major disadvantage of lab-grown organs is they still need major surgery to implant.

I also think we will soon find (if we haven't already) that the limit on human lifetime and quality is from diet and excercise, and that these approaches get much more gains per dollar. We will soon find (if we haven't already) that health is limited by resources, not science. Prevention before intervention.

(PhD student in Bioengineering. I don't work in tissue engineering but most of the people in my office do.)