Beauty Is Only (3-D Printed) Skin Deep
Opinions expressed by Â鶹Éç contributors are their own.
Global cosmetics giant L’Oréal has waged a battle against gravity for more than a century, with countless creams, peels and potions as its weapons. Now the global beauty brand is pulling out the latest, greatest, high-tech guns in the age-old war on wrinkles: 3-D printers that make real human skin.
L’Oréal USA, the largest arm of the French cosmetics company, recently that it is teaming up with a San Diego-based bioprinting startup called to print actual skin tissue.
Related: Skin and Bones: Oh, the Body Parts You Can Make With 3-D Bio-printers
Not only will the new partnership mean gobs more man-made skin for L’Oréal to experiment with, it will also accelerate its shift , reports . Rejoice, mice everywhere.
Dabbling in skin replication in the lab is nothing new to 106-year-old L’Oréal. In its endless pursuit of the Fountain of Youth, the company has researched reconstructed skin for the past three decades, growing thousands of human skin specimens in a “,” though never via 3-D bioprinters before. Now, it’s looking to Organovo — which has worked with Merck to successfully 3-D print multicellular human liver and kidney tissues — to further improve how it tests its products for safety and performance, and maybe eventually much more.
Related: This Smart Skin-Scanning App Could Save Your Life
Here, you can see how Organovo prints functional skin samples:
The 3-D printed skin tissue will be produced using Organovo’s NovoGen Bioprinting Platform. Using microscopic building blocks from human skin cells, the printing process involves a skin “bio ink” that is blended with a filler gel and tested in a tray.
Aside from using bioprinted skin to improve product assessments, 3-D printed skin tissue is already being tested in clinical trials as a treatment for burns and to reduce scars. Perhaps someday it will even be used to fill in crow’s feet and laugh lines, too? A dab here, a dab there and you’re good as new. Maybe.
Related: How a 3-D Printer Called ‘Mink’ Could Completely Make Over the $55 Billion Beauty Industry
Global cosmetics giant L’Oréal has waged a battle against gravity for more than a century, with countless creams, peels and potions as its weapons. Now the global beauty brand is pulling out the latest, greatest, high-tech guns in the age-old war on wrinkles: 3-D printers that make real human skin.
L’Oréal USA, the largest arm of the French cosmetics company, recently that it is teaming up with a San Diego-based bioprinting startup called to print actual skin tissue.
Related: Skin and Bones: Oh, the Body Parts You Can Make With 3-D Bio-printers
