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posted by janrinok on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-would-you-like-your-skin-sir? dept.

Cosmetics manufacturer L'Oréal is teaming up with bioengineering start-up Organovo to begin 3D-printing human skin. L'Oréal already grows human skin samples:

L'Oréal 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."

Organovo has previously offered 3D-printed liver tissue for researchers and pharmaceutical companies:

"It was unclear how liver-like the liver structures were," said Alan Faulkner-Jones, a bioengineering research scientist at Heriot Watt university. Printing skin could be a different proposition, he thinks. "Skin is quite easy to print because it is a layered structure," he told the BBC. "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 printed skin has more value in a medical scenario, he thinks. "It would be a great thing to have stores of spare skins for burn victims."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @01:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @01:46AM (#185848)

    "It would be a great thing to have stores of spare skins for burn victims."

    Or rich fat women who want new skin to try and fool men. This will be the next "boob job" that women are going to want.

    Got bad skin? Find a rich man willing to get you re-skinned. This will develop a market for different shades of skin in different thicknesses. One for ever occasion. And then designer skins... not that I disagree with any of it.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:02AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:02AM (#185854) Journal

    Once we have the ability to grow entire new bodies and upload our minds to them, there won't be any trick except for the identity of the person on the inside.

    Before then, I imagine it will be expensive and weird to graft on patches of 3D printed skin, so an in vivo regenerative solution for making skin "younger" would be preferred.

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    • (Score: 2) by ilPapa on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:48AM

      by ilPapa (2366) on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:48AM (#185866) Journal

      Before then, I imagine it will be expensive and weird to graft on patches of 3D printed skin

      There's a nice bit about skin replacement in William Gibson's novel, The Peripheral.

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