Leather identical to natural

New artificial leather imitates the structure of the real

Tatiana Matveeva, "Scientific Russia"

The new material, developed by scientists from the University of Birmingham and the University of Huddersfield (UK), consists of three layers, like real leather, which allows you to create complex printed structures for wound treatment, according to a press release. American Institute of Physics. The development is described in detail in the journal APL Bioengineering (Moakes et al., A suspended layer additive manufacturing approach to the bioprinting of tri-layered skin equivalents).

The layers of synthetic skin mimic the hypoderm (fat layer), dermis and epidermis of real skin. These layers consist of three different types of cells that grow at different rates, which makes it difficult to print synthetic skin as similar as possible to the real one. 

To overcome this limitation, scientists used 3D printing technology - additive manufacturing of the suspended layer (suspended layer additive manufacturing, SLAM). They created a gel-like material that supports artificial skin by twisting and changing the structure of the gel as it forms. During printing, the layers of skin are in this gel, holding the tissues in place. After printing, the supporting material is washed off – and the printed equivalent of the skin remains.

For the test, the researchers cut out a piece in a pigskin sample and printed a "patch" of artificial leather. After cultivating the model system for 14 days, they found that the wound was healing. To consider how the printed material is embedded in living tissue, the team used a dye. 

Now it is difficult to assess whether the new technology is suitable for the treatment of chronic ulcers or more complex skin lesions, since this process takes more than two weeks. In future work, scientists plan to check this. 

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