L’Oreal USA, Organovo partner to develop 3-D printed skin tissue

L’Oreal USA has entered into a research partnership with 3-D bioprinting company Organovo Holdings.

The partnership between L’Oreal’s US-based global Technology Incubator and Organovo will bring together Organovo’s proprietary NovoGen Bioprinting Platform and L’Oreal’s expertise in skin engineering to develop 3-D printed skin tissue for product evaluation and other areas of advanced research.

L’Oreal Global Technology Incubator vice president Guive Balooch said: "We developed our technology incubator to uncover disruptive innovations across industries that have the potential to transform the beauty business.

"Organovo has broken new ground with 3-D bioprinting, an area that complements L’Oreal’s pioneering work in the research and application of reconstructed skin for the past 30 years. Our partnership will not only bring about new advanced in vitro methods for evaluating product safety and performance, but the potential for where this new field of technology and research can take us is boundless."

Being used within the beauty industry for the first time, Organovo’s 3D bioprinting technology enables the reproducible, automated creation of living human tissues that mimic the form and function of native tissues in the body.

Organovo chairman and CEO Keith Murphy said: "This partnership is a great next step to expand the applications of Organovo’s 3-D bioprinting technology and to create value for both L’Oreal and Organovo by building new breakthroughs in skin modeling."