Inside L’Oreal’s Plan to 3-D Print Human Skin

[demmiblue]

Source: Wired

L’Oreal makes cosmetics and hair color. It also makes skin. Human skin, created in a lab, so it can test its products without using people or animals. Now it’s talking about printing the stuff, using 3-D bioprinters that will spit out dollops of skin into nickel-sized petri dishes.

The idea is to produce skin more quickly and easily using what is essentially an assembly line developed with Organovo, a San Diego bioprinting company. Such a technique would allow the French cosmetics company to do more accurate testing, but it also has medical applications—particularly in burn care.

Treating severe burns typically involves grafting a healthy patch of skin taken from elsewhere on the body. But large burns present a problem. That has researchers at Wake Forest experimenting with a treatment method that involves applying a small number of healthy skin cells onto the injury and letting them grow organically over the wound. 3-D-bioprinted skin potentially could be produced faster, provided Organovo can successfully replicate the cell structure of human epidermis.

L’Oreal already has a massive lab in Lyon, France, to produce its patented skin, called Episkin, from incubated skin cells donated by surgery patients. The cells grow in a collagen culture before being exposed to air and UV light to mimic the effects of aging. Organovo pioneered the process of bioprinting human tissues, most notably creating a 3-D-printed liver system. Both parties benefit from the partnership: L’Oreal gets Organovo’s speed and expertise, and Organovo gets funding and access to L’Oreal’s comprehensive knowledge of skin, acquired through many years and over $1 billion in research and development.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/inside-loreals-plan-3-d-print-human-skin/

[calimary]

1. WHOA!!!!

This stuff just blows my mind. PRINTING human skin.

Blows.

My.

MIND!!!

[Orrex]

2. It's a sad day when we're no longer rubbing cosmetics in immobilized bunnies' eyes

Very cool news. I've read about some experimental work in "skin printing" for burn recovery, and this seems like a very sensible and humane outgrowth of that technology.

[demmiblue]

5. It is cool.

Reducing the risks and costs associated with skin grafting, plus not having to depend on human/animal testing...

[closeupready]

3. Very exciting. K&R

[polly7]

4. I'm very glad to see this.

My brother was burned over 80% of his body, nearly half of those first degree burns - it was difficult for them to find enough healthy skin to graft and created more problems with increased sites for infection, more pain and longer healing period.

Amazing technology and the minds that create and use it.

[mopinko]

6. they could sell this to tattoo artists.

especially apprentices. my daughter is one, and fake skin to practice on is EXPENSIVE.

[yodermon]

7. the stock ticker is ONVO

and it's trading around 4.83 right now
http://www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=onvo&ty=c&ta=1&p=d