Imagine if you could print yourself a new skin. Wrinkles and wounds begone with the flick of a switch. I appreciate that this sounds farfetched, but I have been looking into bioprinting and anti-aging applications are not so far off into the future.

So what is bioprinting?

Bioprinting is a type of 3D printing that uses actual cells and other biological materials as “inks” to fabricate 3D biological structures. Bioprinted materials have the potential to repair damaged organs, cells, and tissues in the human body (source). All sorts of cell types are being studied for bioprinting including stem cells, muscle cells, and endothelial cells. When printed, each layer of cells will cool and stick to one another (due to the collagen), creating a solid, stable structure.

Researchers have used bioprinting to introduce cells to help repair the heart after a heart attack as well as deposit cells into wounded skin.

A couple of years ago, researchers in Singapore mimicked human skin pigmentation using a 3-D bioprinter. he pigmented skin was constructed in vitro using three types of skin cells: keratino­cytes, melanocytes and fibroblasts. Apparently, this was a breakthrough for the making biometic skin because while the skin itself isn’t a problem, uniform pigmentation had been a real challenge.

A review of scientific literature, covering studies that mostly used collagen and hydrosol gels as the biometric “ink”, found that there had been a “positive impact of natural bioinks in promoting wound healing.” These have all been animal tests, but some researchers think that human wound healing with bioink will happen in the next 3-5 years.

A clue that we could see cosmetic skincare applications one day came when L’Oreal partnered with a 3-D bioprinting company to develop 3-D printed tissue for product evaluation and research (source).