San Diego-based Organovo, which develops 3-D printing methods for living tissue, announced Tuesday that it will join up with two National Institutes of Health groups to print tissue for medical purposes, according to GigaOm.

“Researchers who develop new therapies for patients are too often hampered by animal models and traditional cell culture models that are poor predictors of drug efficacy and toxicity in human beings,” Organovo CEO Keith Murphy said in a press release. “Our 3-D printer creates living human tissues that more closely reproduce in vivo human tissues,” she said.

While Organovo is currently working independently on printing and commercializing liver tissue for toxicology testing, partnerships will focus on printing eye tissue.

The tissue will be printed using Organovo’s NovoGen MMX Bioprinter. It works much like an ink printer, except that it lays down living cells layer by layer.

Organovo has printed liver tissue, bone, blood vessels, muscle, heart tissue and more.

By Lee Shin-young, Intern reporter (sylee@heraldcorp.com)