The human skin is an incredible organism that helps protect us from an increasingly hostile world but at the same time is also very fragile. One of the holy grails in medicine has been to find a away to create synthetic skin in ways that isn’t time consuming or expensive.

Well it appears that a team from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft science institute in Germany may have reached that holy grail. The team of scientists have created a way to mass produce artificial skin complete with blood vessels that can be used for everything from skin grafts for burn victims to plastic surgery.

The basic skin production system, which Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft hopes to start selling next year, can produce 5,000 little swatches of human skin a month, for a total of over 600 square inches of mass-produced tissue. Each 0.12-square-inch section of skin would cost around $49 to produce, far less than the current cost.

The system, which should be available in 2010, is fully automated, with computers controlling the solution that the skin grows in, monitoring the vats for infection, guiding the blade that cuts the swatches, and even testing the quality of the final product. So far, this project has generated 19 patents for Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Source: PopSci.com – From Germany, a Way to Mass-Produce Artificial Human Skin

As well the artificial skin will be able to be used in place of animals when it comes to medical and cosmetic testing which should make PETA jump for joy.