L’Oréal is teaming up with bio-engineering start-up Organovo to 3D-print human skin, which will be used in product tests. Organovo has already made claims it can 3D-print a human liver and is one of the first companies in the world to offer commercially available 3D-printed organs.

L’Oréal currently grows skin samples for use in testing from tissues donated by plastic surgery patients. The beauty firm produces more than 100,000 0.5sq cm skin samples per year and grows nine varieties across all ages and ethnicities.

This is Organovo’s first tie-up with the cosmetics industry, but experts believe printed skin has more value in a medical scenario.

“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,” said Alan Faulkner-Jones, a bio-engineering research scientist at Heriot Watt University who also added that the medical industry seemed a much more likely avenue for Organovo to pursue. “It would be a great thing to have stores of spare skins for burn victims,” he said.

L’Oréal gave no timeframe for when printed skin samples would be available and offered little detail about the advantages in its statement: “Our partnership will not only bring about new advanced in vitro methods for evaluating products safety and performance, but the potential for where this new field of technology and research can take us is boundless.”

3D-printing offers the spa industry a number of challenges but also numerous opportunities. Spa Business recently outlined these challenges and opportunities in its annual forecast report Spa Foresight™, predicting the top 20 long-term trends expected to have a big impact on the industry.