L'Oreal is exploring the use of 3-D-printed skin to test products and reduce the controversial use of live animals. Above, reconstructed human epidermis at the Lyon EpiSkin facility. Philippe Gotteland | L’Oréal /EpiSkin

Growing human skin in a petri dish isn't the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the name L'Oréal. Yet the French cosmetics giant, whose other brands include Lancôme, Maybelline New York, Ralph Lauren Fragrances and The Body Shop, also produces gelatinous, dime-sized blobs called EpiSkin. The company's researchers use the lab-produced tissue to test the efficacy of ingredients and tolerance of products before they go to market. This is part of a larger, ongoing effort within the scientific community to reduce and replace the use of live rabbits, mice and other laboratory animals in tests and experiments. But besides sparing lab animals pain and suffering, and often death, EpiSkin also represents a revenue source for L'Oréal, which sells the product to cosmetics, pharmaceutical, chemical and household products manufacturers that conduct similar tests. Simultaneously, the company is tempering the public outcry over animal testing that's plagued the cosmetics industry, among others, for decades. Meanwhile, L'Oréal is partnering with San Diego-based Organovo to engineer 3-D bioprinting of human skin. "We're also developing technologies that will 3-D print hair follicles in vitro," said Bouez. "We see great potential for this in terms of tissue engineering and the development of future products."

EpiSkin's biggest competitor

The proliferation of 3-D reconstructed tissue models, as EpiSkin is technically known, in product testing is relatively recent, coinciding with wider regulatory approval, yet the biotechnology behind it dates back to the 1980s. Among the pioneers is MatTek, based in Ashland, Massachusetts, and founded in 1985 by two chemical engineering professors from MIT. In 1993 the private company launched its first commercial product, EpiDerm, which today is EpiSkin's major competitor. MatTek produces about two adult humans' worth of skin every week at its Massachusetts facility and another site in Slovakia. The raw material for EpiDerm is actual human skin cells retrieved from surgical waste following cosmetic surgeries and circumcisions. Cells are also procured through commercial sources or tissue banks. "We start with cells in a petri dish," a process generally referred to as in vitro, said senior scientist Michael Bachelor. Over several weeks the cells are fed nutrients "to promote the growth of the tissue to resemble what it's like in the normal human body," he added. EpiDerm is sold in kits, comprising 24 individual tissues, for about $1,000. More from Modern Medicine:

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A major step forward in fighting Alzheimer's L'Oréal acquired the EpiSkin biotechnology in 1997 and has since used it to test hundreds of ingredients and finished products, including L'Oréal Paris pure clay mask and La Roche-Posay's Lipikar body milk. "EpiSkin models are also available to the global scientific community to support academic and corporate research and development activities across industries," said Charbel Bouez, vice president of advanced research at L'Oréal's America Zone and president of EpiSkin. In 2011, L'Oréal opened its Predictive Evaluation Center in Lyon, France. The 12,000-square-foot facility, staffed by more than 60 scientists, grows more than 100,000 human skin tissue samples annually, most about 0.5 square centimeter in size. Last year L'Oréal invested more than $900 million in research and innovation. The use of animals for all sorts of product testing, as well as for medical, military, agricultural and other areas of research, has long been a contentious issue. On one side are proponents who contend that animal testing is essential to human health and safety, pointing to numerous lifesaving discoveries. Opponents counter by claiming that differences between animal and human biology make many tests unreliable. Perhaps more powerful, though, are the moral and ethical quandaries that animal testing raise, and ultimately whether animals have rights that supersede the benefits to humans.