Science is pretty great. Without it, we wouldn’t have a lot of the things you take for granted every day, like mobile phones, the internet or cars for moths.
But the latest scientific marvel is as equally disturbing as it is amazing. Dear friends, behold. The 3D printer for skin.
Yeah buddy, that shit prints SKIN. While the concept isn’t exactly new, scientists from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research in Spain have created an actual working prototype that produces skin adequate for human use such as severe burns.
Not only that, it can be used to test cosmetic, chemical and pharmaceutical products instead of animals.
It works by printing the skin in layers as it exists naturally – the outer layers that act as protection against external environments and below that, the thicker, deeper layers.
Like a conventional printer that relies on different coloured ink cartridges, the skin printer uses bioinks that contain different biological components. When combined, they create real, living skin. Gross.
Industrially used skin can be created on a large scale from “stock cells”, whereas therapeutically suitable skin must be created from the patients own cells.
“We use only human cells and components to produce skin that is bioactive and can generate its own human collagen, thereby avoiding the use of the animal collagen that is found in other methods,” says the research paper published in the scientific journal, Biofabrication.
“This method of bioprinting allows skin to be generated in a standardized, automated way, and the process is less expensive than manual production,” said BioDan CEO, Alfredo Brisac.
The skin printer is currently going through the European approval process.
Source: www.uc3m.es.
Photo: American Psycho.
