L'Oreal to Experiment With 3D Printing
French cosmetics firm L'Oreal is teaming up with bio-engineering start-up Organovo to 3D-print human skin.
It said the printed skin would be used in product tests.
L'Oreal currently grows skin samples from tissues donated by plastic surgery patients. It produces more than 100,000, 0.5 sq cm skin samples per year and grows nine varieties across all ages and ethnicities.
Its statement explaining the advantage of printing skin, offered little detail: "Our partnership will not only bring about new advanced in vitro methods for evaluating product safety and performance, but the potential for where this new field of technology and research can take us is boundless."
L'Oreal already grows skin in its labs
It also gave no timeframe for when printed samples would be available, saying it was in "early stage research".
Organovo uses a method, which allows for the direct assembly of 3D tissues without the need for a scaffold.
It is one of the first companies to offer commercially available 3D-printed human organs.
"The advantages for the cosmetics industry would be that it doesn't have to test products on animals and will get a better response from human skin."
But some experts think printed skin has more value in a medical scenario, "It would be a great thing to have stores of spare skins for burn victims."
Resources:
BBC
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