Artificial leather will soon come off the assembly line
German researchers have designed a fully automated technological process for the production of artificial skin consisting of living cells. This development is designed to meet the need of various industries for leather models to test the compatibility of new types of related products with it. Such models are much more informative than animal experiments.
The existing technology of manufacturing artificial skin tissue is very complex and implies a large amount of manual work. Because of this, manufacturers currently present on the market cannot produce more than 2,000 small fragments of tissue per month, most of which consist of cells of the same type. At the same time, the annual demand for artificial leather in the EU countries alone exceeds 6.5 million units – they are necessary for testing products such as medical and hygienic cosmetics, detergents, medicines, plasters, etc.
Developers from the Fraunhofer Institute of Integumentary Tissue Engineering and Biotechnology in Stuttgart managed to create a two-layer artificial skin consisting of different types of cells. To date, this is the most accurate model of human skin. Then the scientists began to develop a fully automated technological process for its production.
The production of artificial leather begins with the sterilization of small fragments of human skin, their grinding, processing with special enzymes and separation of cells of two different types. Then cell cultures are grown separately on nutrient media, after which they form two-layer billets of skin models with the addition of collagen to give natural elasticity. The obtained samples are placed in a wet incubator, where in less than three weeks the layers fuse together and form ready-made fragments of artificial skin. This process is very complicated, expensive, and requires a large amount of manual work, which makes it difficult to mass produce samples.
An interdisciplinary group, which included specialists from four Fraunhofer institutes, designed a fully automated production line for two-layer artificial leather. A computer model of the entire technological process and three key production modules are currently being exhibited at the International Biotechnology Convention BIO 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia.
According to the developers, there are about two years left before the project is fully completed. The estimated capacity of the production line is 5,000 units of leather per month, and the cost of one sample is less than 34 euros, which significantly exceeds existing offers.
Copper News based on ScienceDaily: Artificial Skin Manufactured In Fully Automated ProcessPortal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru/