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L’Oreal plans to 3D print human skin for lab tests

Cosmetics
giant L’Oreal has announced a partnership with San Diego bioprinting start-up
Organovo, aiming to automate the production of human skin within five years.

Bloomberg reports that L’Oreal has been farming derma since the 1980s, with about half of
this used in-house and the other half sold to competitors and to pharmaceutical
companies.

About 60
are employees in growing and testing human tissues in Lyon, France and over
100,000 skin sample are grown annually.

Under the
reported deal, L’Oreal would provide the skin expertise and funding, and
Organovo supply the technology. Research will go ahead in Organovo’s facilities
and at a new L’Oreal research lab in California.

Organovo’s NovoGen
bioprinting process will be used. Last month Organovo gained headlines by sharing
data at the Experimental Biology conference on 3D printed human kidney tissue it had made.

L’Oreal and
Organovo hope to “speed up and
automate skin production within the next five years”, according to the
Reuters report.

Image: http://3dprintingindustry.com/

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