At this year’s IMCAS 2025 conference in Paris from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1, the French beauty company discussed its L’Oréal Longevity Integrative Science approach, which responds to the increased focus on longevity in the beauty and health industries.
This new approach to anti-aging science explores how mechanisms in the human body can affect skin’s age and appearance and uncover the skin’s biological age rather than chronological age.
The company explained that there are a multitude of benefits including the ability to determine how fast skin is really aging, to advise on the right products to slow down the aging process and to inform beauty shoppers which active ingredients will be efficacious for their skin.
Director of scientific communications at L’Oréal Group Pascale Mora said that longevity anti-aging science is important to the business and highlighted World Health Organization data indicating that by 2050, the population of people age 60 and over is estimated to reach 1.4 billion.
‘A map of 267 biomarkers’
Overall, L’Oréal’s Longevity Integrative Science is based around nine hallmarks of aging described as “nine interconnected biological mechanisms activated by the science of biomarkers.”
The scientific research is built around its technology innovation, the Longevity AI Cloud, which provides “a map of 267 biomarkers that enables us to create three intervention models and extend ‘skin healthspan’ in ways we never could before,” the firm said.
In terms of extending ‘skin healthspan’, L’Oréal has three intervention models corresponding to different life stages.
The first intervention is designed to “preserve skin’s youth capital at a molecular level.” The second ‘mid-age intercept’ can “halt metabolic dysfunctions at a cellular level,” while the third is a ‘mature age reset’ designed “to reverse damaged biological functions at a tissular level.”
A comparative aging clock
Research director for microbiome and exposome at L’Oréal R&D Luc Aguilar, said this is still a relatively new area of research and highlighted that there are “a host of biomarkers and interventions” in this space.
He added that there is now generally “a global understanding and willingness to know your biological status at every stage of your life, to know and project the trajectories and change the trajectories before visible signs occur.”
“Based on predictions, your biological status can predict your skin trajectories as a result of the damage you have accumulated over the years,” he explained. “Now you can change your biological age and delay the aging process.”
Aguilar likens this to “a clock that shows what stage you should be at what age” and said that “the clock for biological age doesn’t always have to correlate with the chronological age.”
As such, people can view how they are aging in comparison to this ‘clock’, which shows the average aging pattern to help someone find out whether they are aging faster or slower than the ‘average population’.
“This is based on the old geroscience—identifying interventions—geroprotectors so you can preserve your organs to be healthier for longer,” Aguilar said.
“There are data sets that are generating markers for each of the organs associated with the risk of these things appearing in the future.”
At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2025, L’Oréal introduced its new concept: CellBioPrint, which provides personalized skin analysis in just five minutes using advanced proteomics—the composition of proteins in the human body that impact the signs of aging. This innovation reveals skin’s biological age that can be used to provide recommendations on slowing down the skin aging process.
Biomarkers used are linked to elements such as skin dryness, excess sebum, oily skin or wrinkles, for example. These include LCN-1 (Lipocalin-1), IDE (Insulin-Degrading Enzyme), KLG-2 (Filaggrin-2), TG-3 (Transglutaminase 3) and YKL-40 (Chitinase 3-Like1).
“We are always researching new intervention strategies,” Aguilar added. “We believe a holistic approach is needed to tackle the highest-level performance for longevity. We are planning to use diagnostic tools like BioCell and topical devices on top of supplements—which we are currently evaluating—and overall give a global service to the consumer to extend skin and hair healthspan.”
L’Oréal previously offered skin diagnosis solutions based on a customer photograph of visible wrinkles, redness or texture, but is now shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach to skin aging.
As part of this, the products it recommends will be even more customized to meet the user’s needs.
‘Cohorts are now needed’
L’Oréal analyzed the research around the 12 hallmarks of aging and chose the nine it felt were most relevant.
“These nine hallmarks are interconnected and address damaged molecules and structural dysfunction, as well as when the cell cannot cope and starts to decline and there is cellular dysfunction and visible signs start to appear,” Aguilar said.
These ‘hallmarks’ are mapped out in the AI Longevity Cloud, and researchers are working to figure out the best course of action based on someone’s biological age and their predicted skin aging trajectory.
“Wherever you are in your life, there are solutions,” Aguilar said. “By first preserving your skin youth capital, by addressing molecular change, by intercepting when the cells are not able to cope with cellular functions, and finally when the signs are visible, critical active ingredients depending on the biological status.”
He noted that more research opportunities are needed for better performing solutions, starting with accessing various cohorts.
“We do have a clear understanding of biomarkers with our cross-sectional studies, but we are bringing in more interventions all the time and for this we need to have longitudinal data sets to see to what extent the interventions are changing the biological clock of the skin,” he explained.
L’Oréal x Timeline and ‘mitophagy’
Despite being the biggest beauty company in the world, Aguilar said that L’Oréal can’t do this alone and needs partners to get the best end results.
“There are a lot of new molecules acting on the hallmarks, and it’s critical to get access to the best hallmarks acting on the molecules,” he explained. “For example, our partnership with Timeline targeting mitochondrial dysfunction.”
The Swiss biotech company, which L’Oréal invested in one year ago, targets mitochondrial health to boost skin healthspan and longevity with urolithin A (Mitopure).
Mitopure, a postbiotic that targets age-related decline at a cellular level, was created in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology de Lausanne (EPFL).
According to Timeline, it is the first postbiotic nutrient “shown to trigger a crucial recycling process within our cells called ‘mitophagy’—targeting age-related cellular decline.”
Mitochondria provides a lot of energy for skin to fight against aging, but with time, dysfunctional mitochondria lead to reduced energy production, cellular decline and skin signs of aging like sagginess, dullness, wrinkles and weakened skin barrier.
The company says that “mitophagy cleans up defective mitochondria and allows the mitochondria to repair themselves and improve their performance. This recycling and cleansing mechanism is proven to provide valuable health benefits.”
According to Julie Faitg, Timeline’s senior manager of applied research and regulatory affairs, mitochondria is present in many places in your body.
“It’s in your liver, your brain, muscles, skin, but not your blood,” she explained. “They are the powerhouse of the cells; the center of everything, when mitochondria function declines, your cells decline, strength and mobility decline.”
It started with pomegranate ellagitannins
Faitg revealed that the company started studying this subject 15 years ago.
“We looked at the inside of pomegranate ellagitannins, which is a precursor for urolithin A,” she explained.
Studies have shown that the best way to get more urolithin A is by eating foods rich in ellagitannins that can help your gut bacteria to produce it.
“If you have the right gut microbiome you can process more of it, but for now in the United States, for example, people only get around 10% to 20% of it due to their lifestyle and diet choices,” she explained.
Timeline started by looking at the effects of urolithin A on muscles and has since conducted six clinical trials, which reported outcomes such as increasing muscle function and improving muscle strength.
“As our next target we wanted to look at skin as it’s the largest organ; the first army to protect us from the outside world,” Faitg said.
This brought them to better understand the concept of ‘mitophagy’, which she describes as “a Pac Man that eats the dysfunctional mitochondria but with age doesn’t work as well anymore.”
“So with age, Pac Man needs a bit of a boost,” she said, which is where Mitopure steps in.
Faitg also shared more details of the clinical trials of Mitopure on skin.
“We took keratinocytes from healthy donors and tested it, we put Mitopure on it,” she explained. “We added the ingredient at different concentrations and found it increases this gene expression.”
The study also looked at fibroblasts (deeper cells) and “found exactly the same signature,” she said.
Studies have shown that overall, the substance can increase skin hydration, decrease wrinkles and improve the skin biome.
The research has also shown it can increase mitochrondria respiration (which decreases with age), and another study showed it helped with an “upregulation of collagen genes,” Faitg said.
There could even be uses for it in the suncare category as Timeline also undertook a photodamage trial and saw a “decrease of 40.4% of erythema with skin with Mitopure on it,” Faitg said.
