“The diagnosis shows that your skin age is five years older than your actual age.”

On 19 August, at the Lancôme new product pop-up store located in Lotte Avenuel Jamsil in Songpa District, Seoul, Kwon Ji-su, customer representative at L’Oréal Group, collected skin proteins from under the reporter’s eye using a small patch. When the patch was then placed in the analysis device, the “biological skin age” appeared on the screen after 1 minute and 30 seconds.

The device tested that day was “Cell BioPrint,” which L’Oréal Group jointly developed with Korean company NanoEntek and unveiled for the first time at the world’s largest consumer electronics and information technology (IT) exhibition, “CES 2025,” last year. As global life expectancy increases and the focus of skincare expands from the current condition to the prediction of future states, the equipment was designed to analyze individual skin characteristics through advanced science and provide customized measures.

● Preemptive response to skin aging with advanced science

As the era of living to 100 becomes commonplace and demand to maintain youth for longer surges, “longevity” is emerging as a new key theme in the beauty industry. Whereas existing products and devices focused on examining visible conditions such as wrinkles and pores and improving aging that had already appeared, the new trend aims to use science and technology to diagnose individual skin conditions, predict changes in advance, and provide tailored care accordingly.

Domestic companies are accelerating investment in related research. Recently, Amorepacific officially announced its group-level research and development (R&D) vision, “Holistic Longevity Solution.” Through this, it unveiled a strategy to extend the concept of longevity beyond skin to hair, inner beauty, and wellness.

Amorepacific is identifying the characteristics of young and healthy skin by analyzing the correlation between skin microbiomes and metabolites. The company plans to utilize these findings in the development of “skin longevity” ingredients going forward. Amorepacific has already developed a “facial aging map” that analyzes which areas of the face develop wrinkles and hyperpigmentation at different ages using AI. This month, it also launched open recruitment for “Skin Longevity Bio Research” positions, focusing on securing specialized talent.

LG Household & Health Care is also conducting research on the longevity of skin, scalp, and hair. The company is analyzing the skin and hair genes of 60,000 Asians and conducting research based on more than 500 patents and clinical data. In collaboration with LG AI Research, it is accelerating the search for new active ingredients by simulating hundreds of thousands of candidate substances using AI.

● Global beauty industry also concentrating investment in longevity

Competition over longevity in the beauty industry is already fierce on a global scale. L’Oréal Group is a prime example of elevating longevity to a group-level research field. It is researching “integrated longevity science,” which analyzes the skin aging process at the cellular and molecular levels, and has built a “longevity artificial intelligence (AI) cloud” that analyzes more than 260 skin longevity-related biomarkers.

Germany’s Beiersdorf, which owns Nivea and Eucerin, is also putting skin longevity at the forefront. Last year, it launched products containing its proprietary ingredient “EPICELLINE,” discovered after more than 15 years of research and development. Park Jong-hyun, analyst at Daol Investment & Securities, said, “Consumers’ desire to delay aging and maintain health is steadily growing,” adding, “Longevity will become an important growth driver for the beauty industry going forward.”

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