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April Reese: Aging isn’t what it used to be—for one thing, we’re living longer than ever. Back in 1900, the average life expectancy in the United States was just 47 years. Today, it’s 78 years, with women living about five years longer than men. We’ve eradicated many of the infectious diseases that took so many lives a century ago, and heart disease is now treatable. But with so many of us sticking around for longer, we’ve just begun to understand why our bodies change as we age. It turns out that the skin can tell us a lot about how well we’re aging, and we’re not talking about wrinkles here. Thanks to major advances in longevity research, we now have a whole new toolbox for analyzing the skin, and no matter what age we are, we can use that information to take better care of not just our skin, but our overall health as we grow older.

Scientific American Custom Media recently sat down with Andrea Maier, a

professor of medicine and director of the Academy for Healthy Longevity at the National University of Singapore, and collaborator with L’Oreal, the beauty company, to learn more about her work. Andrea, we all know that skin changes as we grow older, but what can it tell us about how well we’re aging?

Andrea Maier: So, skin health is a key biomarker of overall longevity, and skin is the largest organ we have. We very often forget how large it is and how important it is. It’s really reflecting how well we are aging from the inside.

April Reese: There seems to be a lot of attention and investment in longevity research right now. Why do you think that is?

Andrea Maier: The investment in longevity is huge at this moment in time. We see a huge consumer drive and asking for products and for interventions to be healthier for longer. So, it is not only that we have major discoveries in research, but there’s also the consumer drive to really ask to get innovative products to the market, but also to advance medicine. And that’s the reason why we coined a new term, and that’s precision geromedicine. And what does it mean? It’s healthy longevity medicine to really optimize the health of aging individuals, not only the 70 and 80 year olds, but especially the 30- to 50-year-old who are at the moment aging.

April Reese: Well, I’m 57, so I definitely identify with that. I think a lot of people, when they think of longevity and advances in the science, like personalized data, they’re focusing on, okay, I can use this to look better. But longevity science is about far more than that, right? Why is this new ability to make individualized skin assessments so important for our health?

Andrea Maier: This is a very, very important trend. We now know that the aging process is very different between individuals. So, if you are looking at individuals of your same chronological age, they might have a very different biological age, which means they can, or you can, age faster or slower compared to your peers. And that’s not only occurring at the inner side, but especially also in the skin. And we can now measure changes in the skin

during the chronological aging process, so think about skin elasticity, hydration state or the barrier function. So, while measuring that, we can also adapt on what kind of products to use, so the first thing is always, where do you stand in the aging process? What is your need to then find an intervention?

April Reese: Okay. So, L’Oreal has developed a tool that can read your skin to reveal your biological age. It’s about the size of a portable speaker. The idea is that you can then use that information to create a science-based skincare plan and choose the right products for your skin. I asked Vania Lacascade, the company’s chief innovation officer, how it works.

Vania Lacascade: It is called L’Oreal Cell BioPrint. So, this device is, it uses advanced proteomics to analyze your skin, and it takes only just five minutes. We’ve created it in partnership with the Korean startup, NanoEnTek, and it literally decodes your skin biology like a cellular fingerprint. So, it provides you with your biological skin age, with your skin’s reactivity to ingredients like retinol, for example, and also it provides you with personalized predictive insights to anticipate your future skin concerns.

April Reese: We’ve seen several of these advances in longevity science and technology in recent years. How do you see longevity research influencing the world of health and beauty in the future?

Vania Lacascade: 20 percent of the global population is projected to be over 60 by 2040, and longevity is only meaningful if those added years are lived in robust health. And we’re entering an era where the pursuit of health, well-being, and beauty are converging and this across age, gender and origin. So, we know that research on longevity has truly revolutionized medicine and healthcare, and we’re shifting from a reactive to a truly proactive and preventive approach. So, longevity is really a movement that is profoundly transforming our relationship to beauty. It’s truly a mindset shift, and frankly, it concerns all of us because we all have this desire to age well, right?

We have 4,000 researchers who have used all the data we have accumulated on skin biology over the 100 years of beauty expertise we have, and we’ve powered all the science with our beauty tech teams worldwide to build our own science for longevity and beauty, powered by AI. And we call it Longevity Integrative Science. So, we’re not just striving to extend the lifespan of our skin cells; we are aiming to truly enhance their health span, and for that, we’re targeting truly the root cause of biological aging.

April Reese: Your science team just created something called the wheel of longevity for beauty, which, from what I understand, allows you to get a detailed, individualized picture of those root causes. Can you describe how that works?

Vania Lacascade: So, this one is decoding skin aging at cellular, molecular, and tissue levels. So, this will combine nine hallmarks of aging, spanning from DNA damage or microbiome, mitochondria dysfunction, or cell senescence, for example. And then, our AI and tech teams have developed a proprietary longevity AI cloud. So, what is it? It’s an AI algorithm that is able to analyze 267 skin biomarkers to really help us to target super precisely the biological changes that are invisible to the naked eye. So, it’s really a powerful new way to deal with this arena of longevity when it comes to skin health. What we believe actually is that you can choose your skin health journey now, throughout life. We truly think that it’ll become possible.

April Reese: And how might these advances in longevity research influence the way we view aging in beauty?

Vania Lacascade: This longevity revolution offers a remarkable opportunity for us to redefine how we perceive age and beauty. It’s replacing ageist beauty standards with a positive, optimistic message, embracing longevity as a way of life, but with this philosophy of lifelong beauty, we can even open a more inclusive and empowering view of beauty.

April Reese: Vania Lacascade is the chief innovation officer at L’Oreal. Andrea Maier is a professor of medicine at the Academy for Healthy Longevity at the National University of Singapore. For over 110 years, L’Oreal has devoted itself to fulfilling the beauty aspirations of consumers around the world.

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Getty Images/Katsiaryna Shautsova

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