A UK tissue engineering company claims that leather generated in a lab has been “successfully produced.” The team behind it believes it has the ability to completely transform the high-end clothing market, even if it is merely in the prototype stage right now.
3D Bio-Tissues (3DBT) is a biotech start-up. Dr. Che Connon, MD of the London-based investment firm BSF Enterprise, is the company’s owner.
Grown exclusively from cells for use in the luxury goods sector, its “tissue-engineered skin” 3DBT claims that the “ethical and sustainable” leather product helps the industry “meet the ever-increasing demand for environmentally and animal-conscious alternative leather products.” The University of Northampton provides the tanning expertise for its leather.
Although no animals are harmed in the production process, the product can still be tanned using conventional leather production techniques or, even better, more recent, environmentally friendly procedures.
The company’s tissue-engineered skin produces a skin/hide structure in a lab over six weeks without the use of any additional supporting materials such as plastics or cellulose in the final skin product. Instead, it uses only “immortalized cells — isolated and collected from an adult female horse following a strict and painless bioethics process.”
It uses the company’s unique, serum-free, and animal-free cell culture medium supplement, dubbed City-mix, “which accelerates tissue production whilst reducing the cost of the production process,” according to the company, setting it apart from other types of lab-grown leather.
What we end up with, then, is something that is made entirely of animal tissue without causing any pain to the animals and can be utilized to make accessories, clothing, shoes, purses, furniture, and fashion items. According to 3DBT, it solves more problems than conventional leather.
It was noted that the size, thickness, and longevity of the animal determine how much it can conceal or skin, which might result in variations and flaws in the finished leather. “On the other hand, the production of leather grown in a lab can be more consistent, with a consistent composition and thickness, devoid of natural imperfections, and scalable to produce larger quantities of material.”
