Sep 28, 2016 | By Alec
Is baldness the number one enemy of the shampoo industry? You’d be tempted to think so, as French beauty product developer L’Oreal has just signed an exclusive research partnership with French biotechnology startup Poietis. Together, they will be applying bioprinting and hair biology breakthroughs to explore possibilities in the 3D bioprinting of hair follicles – the small organs that produce hairs.
L’Oreal, the 105-year-old French beauty brand has been investing in a wide variety of research and innovation projects for decades. It’s an integral part of cosmetics development. Right now, their R&D department employs 3,870 people, and tissue engineering has been on their agenda for more than thirty years.
This new collaboration with French startup Poietis will doubtlessly fuel their tissue engineering efforts, as that company is completely dedicated to biological tissue development for the growing field of regenerative medicine. Founded in Pessac, France, in 2014, Poietis mostly works with various cosmetic and pharmaceutical partners to evaluable the toxicity and efficacy of various drugs and beauty products, and heavily relies on 3D bioprinting technology.
At the core of this new partnership is Poietis’s custom laser-assisted 3D bioprinting technology, which patterns bioinks and scans them with laser beams for additional accuracy. While tissue engineering technologies are, broadly speaking, quite limited in the level of complexity with which they can create cell patterns, this French 3D printing platform can achieve a cellular resolution of down to ten microns. Their cellular viability numbers are up to 95 percent as well. Upon 3D printing, it usually takes up to three weeks of maturing before tissue testing can take place.
Fabien Guillemot, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer at Poietis
That technology is now going to be combined with L’Oreal’s expertise in hair biology, and the French collaboration hopes to achieve the production of functional follicles that can autonomously create hair – a systematic solution for baldness. “Our partnership with L'Oreal should lead to the development of innovative applications in terms of tissue engineering,” Poietis General Manager and Chief Business Officer Bruno Brisson argued.
This multi-year research partnership is expected to yield numerous other hair engineering breakthroughs as well, says Jose Cotovio, the director of L’Oreal’s Predictive Methods and Models department (part of L'Oreal Recherche & Innovation). “For L'Oreal, the combination of our respective areas of expertise opens up the possibility of previously unheard of achievements in the field of hair. This research partnership is very stimulating for the Advanced Research teams,” he said.
Jose Cotovio, Director of Predictive Methods and Models department, L'Oreal Recherche & Innovation and hair biology expert Bruno Bernard
Posted in 3D Printer Company
Maybe you also like:
- Facebook acquires 3D printed modular consumer electronics startup Nascent Objects
- New 3D printing alliance could see Taiwan acquire larger share of global AM market
- Norsk Titanium secures investment from Applied Ventures
- French 3D printer startup Dagoma raises €3M for international expansion
- 3D printing news roundup: 3D printed scoliosis brace brought to White House, XYZprinting announces $290 da Vinci Mini
- WinSun to offer 3D printing expertise for Hyperloop high-speed rail system
- 3M makes non-stick PTFE polymers 3D printable through new patent-pending tech
- Aether ships $9K 3D bioprinter to world's top universities for large-scale bioprinting research collaboration
- 3D printing startup Carbon raises $81M from GE, BMW and Nikon for international expansion
- Organovo launches second 3D bioprinted tissue service, the ExVive Human Kidney, premarket shares go up 7%
3Ders.org provides the latest news about 3D printing technology and 3D printers. We are now seven years old and have around 1.5 million unique visitors per month.
