Lab-Grown Leather: Tissue engineering leather using biomaterials textile technologies and 3D cell culture

The demand for leather in the fashion industry far outweighs current supply. In addition, the use of animals and the tanning process involved for leather production conjures cultural, ethical and environmental issues. Biomaterials and tissue engineering are research areas widely exploited for creating scaffolds to regenerate or replace tissues, such as bone, tendons and skin. The methodologies developed could be readily teamed with textile technologies to create highly innovative lab-grown leather, which would overcome current limitations with supply and ethics.
The principal aim of this project is the pairing of a synthetic scaffold with 3D cell culture techniques to produce a new uniformed textile-cell construct or 'leather'.
This study will enable traditional fibre-scaffolds to be transformed into unique fabrics using textile processes. These biodegradable fabrics will be subsequently cultured with fibroblasts, which will secrete extracellular matrix proteins (including collagen and elastin) and eventually modify it to be comparable to the dermis layer of the skin. This 'artificial' skin will then be subjected to traditional tanning processes minus a number of previously essential steps to create a mechanically stable, uniform leather material.
A major goal will be the understanding of the physical properties of the engineered leather as elucidated using state of the art materials, textile and cell-based characterisation techniques. The key features of the lab grown leather properties and how they are influenced by the tanning process will then be assessed. This project will involve advanced textile, cell culture, material characterisation, as well as development of novel tanning techniques. The University of Manchester is one of only two in the UK with a KES-FB textile testing equipment, offering the opportunity to effectively test performance properties of the new textile material. This is necessary as subjective assessment (visual appearance) is the most common method of quality control used in the sorting and selecting of leather hides.
This cross-disciplinary project links two independent research groups at the University of Manchester (Textiles and Biomaterials) and one at the University of Liverpool (Biomaterials). This highly innovative research project will set the foundation for development and expansion of lab-grown textile materials for diverse fashion and technical textile applications.