3D Printing Skin?

In recent years 3D printing is featuring on the news more and more. It’s constantly being put to the test, and what was initially building small 3D models is now building human organs!

French cosmetics conglomerate L'Oreal has teamed up with bio-engineering start-up Organovo to start 3D-printing human skin, which will be used for advanced research and to test products.

Organovo, based in the US, designs and creates living human tissue using its proprietary 3D bioprinting technology to print cells that can grow into human organs. They have already been in media recently after they claimed that they can 3D-print a human liver, but this is its first relationship with the cosmetics industry.

L'Oreal currently grows skin samples from tissues donated by plastic surgery patients, producing over 10,000 sq m skin samples per year, growing nine varieties across all ages and ethnicities.

 They released this statement about the partnership - "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."

It also gave no timeframe for when printed samples would be available, saying it was in "early stage research".

The advantages of this 3D-printing for the cosmetics industry is that it doesn't have to test products on animals and will get a better response from human skin. Some experts have said to be hopeful that printing skin will be fantastic for treating those affected by burn injuries.

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