The other day I was watching Botched on E and came to realize that girls can do anything to remain relevant in the eyes of other people. Technically, these ladies become more makeup than human, or rather more plastic than flesh. I tell you what, if you bleach your skin orange and add fluid on your body in order to make things bigger than the usual size; you become a robot by choice. But crap that, now they have an artificial skin that scientists say is better than normal skin.
Skin lightening has many effects and countries like Ivory Coast banned skin lightening creams because of the negative health effects associated with them – ranging from something as light as acne to devastating repercussions such as cancer. According to science, lightening creams reduce the amount of melanin in the skin. Melanin is the pigment that gives human skin, hair, and eyes their color. Dark-skinned people have more melanin in their skin compared to light-skinned people.
Introducing an artificial skin that is better than normal skin
Now, researchers have developed an artificial skin that’s 100% effective than skin lightening and plastic surgery. The guys have developed an artificial skin made of polymer that is strong, stretchy and adherent, just like the real skin. The artificial skin is considered as a “second skin” since you can wear it on top of your normal skin.
“It’s kind of like an invisible Spanx that you could put on skin,” said Robert Langer, professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“We created a new material that is safe,” Langer said. “We’ve put it on human beings. It’s adherent and mechanically strong. It’s easy to apply.”
Langer has been working on the project for the past eight and the results are positive albeit the challenges they faced in the past few years.
Langer and his colleagues came up with a silicon-based film forms from two different creams that are applied one after the other. The combination forms an invisible polymer layer that reinforces the skin beneath, while also providing a breathable barrier layer on top.
“The big challenge is finding something with all those properties,” Langer told DNews. “The key way to address that is through combinatorial chemistry. We created this library of hundreds of polymers and discovered one of them that worked really well.”
Human skin is not immune to environmental conditions, aging and diseases hence the need to undergo plastic surgery or skin lightening. However, the second skin will be used to protect and enhance the skin, as well as combat skin diseases such as psoriasis. Olivo and Langer’s lab at MIT had developed a skin cream several years ago called Neotensil that made waves for its $500 price tag and endorsement by Jennifer Aniston.
“The second skin will be used for both medical and cosmetics,” Langer wrote. “The new embodiments translate into very different product attributes. The new version is also designed for medical applications.”
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