What looks like the skeleton of a desk-size, inkjet printer sits in the offices of TeVido BioDevices in Austin, Texas. The cartridge, which usually holds ink, is filled with living human cells. Where you might expect paper in the tray, a specialized gel sits ready to catch the finished product. A computer-programmed script instructs the printer to deposit the cells in layers upon layers, slowly forming a vaguely biological shape.

As the printer wends its way back and forth with a scratchy, buzzy sound, a transparent, gelatinous substance starts to pile up. It bears an uncanny resemblance to colorless Jell-O.

In fact, it's breast tissue.

Its destiny, as planned by TeVido, is to become an implant for one of the 200,000 women diagnosed annually in the US with breast cancer, 60% of whom choose lumpectomies that leave their natural breasts abnormally shaped. "Having got through the whole emotional trauma that they may die, many women are left disfigured and have to deal with that, also," said Laura Bosworth, CEO and co-founder of TeVido.

But before that implant can be made and sold to breast-cancer patients, TeVido faces a grueling and unprofitable years-long trip to perfect the technology.

Skeptics abound. No printhead design has produced the detailed resolution needed for fragile cells that constitute tissues and organs, said Linda Griffith, director of the Center of Gynepathology Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, the long time it takes to print in high resolution requires better methods to keep cells stable during the lengthy manufacturing process. Even if TeVido can solve such scientific conundrums, making the technology practical and cost effective will prove a great technical challenge, according to Griffith.

"If you 3D print a dress, or a gun, it is pretty easy to tell right away if it works," she said. "The assays to tell whether bioprinting works are really, really time consuming and expensive."

For TeVido, Bosworth estimates seven more years and $40m of tests, including innumerable grant applications and attempts to woo reluctant venture capitalists. At the end, if TeVido succeeds, it might be fighting for only a tiny portion of a market that will grow to a negligible $1.9bn in value by 2025, according to Lux Research, a research firm for emerging technologies.

Welcome to the revolutionary, maddening, promising and currently very unprofitable world of bioprinting.

3D guns and 3D tchotchkes are already de rigeur conversational topics for policy wonks and science magazines, but fewer people talk about the booming field of 3D printing for human body parts. Scientists at Cornell University have bioprinted prosthetic human ears, while agriculture-focused Modern Meadow is printing meat and leather.

San Diego-based Organovo, one of the pioneers in the field, is experimenting with bioprinted liver tissue prototypes. The vision is that within decades, scientists will be able to take a biopsy of the liver of someone needing a replacement and then print a new 3D version – "the Holy Grail of what this technology could do," according to Bosworth.

But it's early days, and bioprinting companies are scrambling for money to fund their utopian ambitions. Organovo's losses from operations, for instance, have far outpaced even its rapidly growing revenues. While revenues doubled to $1.2m between 2010 and 2012, losses increased nearly eight-fold to $9.3m in the same time period. Mikael Renard, executive vice president of Organovo's commercial operations, says more funding would likely enable the company to succeed in a shorter timeframe, though for now 3D printed organs remain decades away.

TeVido is facing a similar financial wall. It is testing its breast tissue on mice through a National Science Foundation grant, and it will need about seven years before getting to human trials. That leaves Bosworth, the CEO, scratching her head about where to find the $40m needed to get her technology to market. Following the path of many similar startups, the company plans to cobble it together, hoping for $15m in grants and the rest in private capital from potential partners and venture capitalists.

The latter, however, have not been lining up, overcome by caution in the face of a very young, emerging technology. It remains a challenge to get venture capitalists interested in technologies whose development could take in excess of 10 years, according to venture capitalist Bijan Salehizadeh, co-founder of NaviMed Capital. Salehizadeh has yet to invest in a bioprinting company, though he's invested in other types of healthcare companies dealing in biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical devices.

In the hierarchy of venture capital interest, software companies are at the top, boosted by their comparable ease and low cost despite their high rate of failure. Healthcare comes after, promising excellent long-term returns if investors have the patience. Bioprinting is somewhere near the bottom, requiring patience for long-term investment and US Food and Drug Administration hurdles.

The result is a gulf between potential and realization that will take decades – and billions – to work, but it's anyone's guess if the industry has the luxury of either. The business model is likely to change if bioprinting can deliver on its promises, and churn out organs enough to save millions of lives.

In the meantime, it's vanity that may pay the bills. TeVido's potential solution for lumpectomies, for instance, could expand to the billion dollar US market for breast augmentation, printing implants and nipples, which currently are often tattooed back on.

Those companies that do survive will have to fight for their pennies. The market for 3D printing is expected to grow to $8.4bn by 2025, according to Lux Research's report. Bioprinting's contribution will be negligible by that stage, said Anthony Vicari, a research associate for the report. Most of the medical industry's $1.9 billion share of the market will come from 3D printed medical devices and orthopedic parts.

But that shouldn't put off investors, Salehizadeh said, who pointed out the time it took after the birth of the computer era before its technology took off and proved profitable – Microsoft was founded in 1975 and didn't go public until 1986. Furthermore, backing bioprinting could prove profitable beyond just the bottom line.

"We should all as citizens of society want these companies to succeed as they're working on improving everyone's quality of life," Salehizadeh said. "This is a rare area of venture capitalism where investments lead to tangible benefits."