3D Printing Skin Is Real: Here's What You Need to Know

A bioprinter is essentially like a 3D printer…for the body. 3D printers have already made waves in the beauty industry, where companies like Mink now allow you to create makeup products in any shade you dream up. Even Smashbox offered 3D-printed lipsticks last year. Now, the recent study in IOPscience journal takes this technology to a new level: The bioprinter combines bioinks to create skin. The bioinks don't contain any "ink" at all. Instead, they're the cellular components of skin, like human plasma, primary human fibroblasts, and keratinocytes. In the same way that cartridges and ink work together to imprint images onto paper, the bioinks are mixed in a way that results in human skin.

 So far, this technology can create two types of skin tissue. The first is just regular skin. This is formed using a stock of generic human cells printed on a mass scale and could be used for, say, testing new beauty products, which could make testing on animals obsolete. The other type of skin tissue is developed with an individual’s own cells, and it would be used therapeutically and in special cases, like as a graft for severe burns or skin conditions. "The outer skin layer provides a protective barrier for our bodies against the environment," explains Joshua Zeichner, dermatologist and director of cosmetic & clinical research in dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. When that outer skin layer is either gone or not functioning properly, you’re at risk for infection and inflammation. Enter the new, lab-made skin. And, if you’re wondering if there’s potential for this synthetic skin to slow signs of aging, the answer is probably. “While the new technology will initially be applied to chronic wounds and burns, it likely will have cosmetic applications in the future in addressing aging skin,” says Zeichner.

 What’s especially promising about this isn’t the skin itself, since lab-made human skin isn’t exactly new. (We’re learning so much today!) But it usually takes around three weeks to create enough skin to cover a large wound. The bioprinter, on the other hand, makes it happen in just 35 minutes—with no sacrifice in quality. "The generated skin was very similar to human skin and, furthermore, it was indistinguishable from bilayered dermo-epidermal equivalents, handmade in our laboratories," the authors noted in the article, which is a fancy way of saying it's just as good as any other skin graft materials they'd been using in the past.European regulatory agencies are currently testing it to see how safe it is for burn patients. If it’s a success, the technology could eventually be used to create more than just skin—think organs and other tissues. (Talk about groundbreaking.) In the meantime, we’ll just be here, doing our best to care for the skin we do have—for now.

 https://www.allure.com/story/