Sledgstone
August 3rd, 2007, 01:04 PM
http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/07/30/labgrown_skin_t.html
http://blog.scifi.com/tech/pics/episkin.jpg
We may be decades away from eating meat that's been grown in a lab, but we should be starting to benefit from lab-grown skin in the very near future. Scientists at L'Oreal have invented a product called Episkin, which is basically a layer of skin cells grown from human "donor skin cells" in a Petri dish. These small amounts of skin can be used to test beauty products that would have otherwise been tested on animals. Episkin can tan, and can be made to "age" with high exposure to UV light.
The skin is being hailed as an important step in cruelty-free cosmetics, at least in Europe, where an animal beauty product-testing ban sets in 2009 (the practice is banned in the U.K. already). We'd like to think that lab-grown skin would be yet more useful: shouldn't Episkin be seen as an important step towards lab-grown (and therefore cruelty-free) pork crackling?
save those bunnies!
http://blog.scifi.com/tech/pics/episkin.jpg
We may be decades away from eating meat that's been grown in a lab, but we should be starting to benefit from lab-grown skin in the very near future. Scientists at L'Oreal have invented a product called Episkin, which is basically a layer of skin cells grown from human "donor skin cells" in a Petri dish. These small amounts of skin can be used to test beauty products that would have otherwise been tested on animals. Episkin can tan, and can be made to "age" with high exposure to UV light.
The skin is being hailed as an important step in cruelty-free cosmetics, at least in Europe, where an animal beauty product-testing ban sets in 2009 (the practice is banned in the U.K. already). We'd like to think that lab-grown skin would be yet more useful: shouldn't Episkin be seen as an important step towards lab-grown (and therefore cruelty-free) pork crackling?
save those bunnies!