His team engineered the first lab-grown organ to be implanted into a human-a bladder

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JACEK1

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Hello again!

His team engineered the first lab-grown organ to be implanted into a human - a bladder - and is developing experimental fabrication technology that can "print" human tissue on demand.

I think I know the general meaning of the sentence under discussion.

What I am especially interested in is in bold type.

In my opinion, the meaning is as follows:

His team designed and built the first lab-grown organ which will be/is to be implanted into a human.

The organ will be/is to be implanted.

What is your opinion?

Thank you.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120621-printing-a-human-kidney
 
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MikeNewYork

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Hello again!

His team engineered the first lab-grown organ to be implanted into a human - a bladder - and is developing experimental fabrication technology that can "print" human tissue on demand.

I think I know the general meaning of the sentence under discussion.

What I am especially interested in is in bold type.

In my opinion, the meaning is as follows:

His team designed and built the first lab-grown organ which will be/is to be implanted into a human.

The organ will be/is to be implanted.

What is your opinion?

Thank you.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120621-printing-a-human-kidney

Many times "to be" is an indicator of a future action. In this case because of the word "first" in "first..to be" and the past tense verb, I read this as saying that the transplant has already been done. The first laboratory-grown urinary bladder was transplanted into a dog in 1999. In 2006, a group published a paper detailing laboratory-grown urinary bladder transplants in 7 people, with at least a five year follow-up. The first procedure was performed in 2000.

More here: Artificial urinary bladder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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