Dior’s Scientific Advisory Board on ‘Reverse-aging’ Set to Meet
PARIS — Parfums Christian Dior is delving deeper into the field of longevity, with a focus on “reverse-aging.”
The LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned brand is convening in Paris the first international scientific advisory board dedicated to the subject. On Monday and Tuesday of next week, 18 scientists from around the world, with varied specialties, will meet with 600 Dior science researchers to discuss the burgeoning topic.
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In the beauty industry, health, then well-being, were buzzwords in the recent past. Now, with their convergence and scientific advances, longevity is becoming an important talking point and industry shape-shifter. Its influence is expected to be widespread, on everything from product creation to services, as people’s life span and mindset continue stretching. Their health span is central to all this.
For the scientists and researchers meeting together, the focus will be on a dozen biological hallmarks of aging, which have been revealed in a study published earlier this year.
“’Hallmark’ means that a mechanism is defined as occurring in a normal aging process,” explained Patricia Ogilvie, a dermatologist and founder of Skin Concept in Munich, who sits on the board. “If you improve this mechanism, you are alleviating, improving, slowing down the aging process. Today we know that there are 12 independent mechanisms that qualify as hallmarks of aging. Every single mechanism is a universe of science.”
Virginie Couturaud, scientific communications director at Parfums Christian Dior, said that with aging come the likes of stem cell exertion, genome instability and chronic inflammation.
“If we act on them, it is possible to reduce and delay the aging process,” she said. “Chronological age is impossible to reverse, but biological age depends on your lifestyle” — and that can be changed.
“If you know your biological age very well, it’s possible to act on it,” continued Couturaud.
Skin is often the first place people see the signs of aging.
“So recognizing the first visible signs is a very good motivational driver for people to start thinking about it and also to become engaged in doing something against it,” said Ogilvie.
For the scientific advisory board, Parfums Christian Dior has called upon what it considers to be the greatest experts specialized in each of the hallmarks. These include: three dermatologists specialized in the effect of skin aging; two botanical experts, including one who is the head of the Harvard herbarium and another from Beijing University, specialized in floral science, and a Harvard psychologist specialized in the perception of aging and how that affects quality of life.
Some of the scientists involved include: Vadim Gladyshev, professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with a specialty in measuring biological age, Nicola Neretti, associate professor of molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry at Brown University, Daisy Robinton, from Harvard University, a PhD in human biology and translational medicine, and Johan Auwerx, who directs the laboratory of integrated systems physiology and is chair of energy metabolism at the École Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland.
“It is a very bold and ambitious approach to say we bring a board together of world-renowned researchers, each of them representing the wealth, knowledge and also scientific efforts of every single hallmark,” said Ogilvie. “That then, of course, needs to be translated into the relevance of skin aging.”
Parfums Christian Dior has made advances on that already, having produced some skin care that works on various aging hallmarks. The brand boasts more than 300 patents and has signed more than 700 scientific papers.
Its first step into the terrain of reverse-aging came in 2022, after having analyzed stem cells and inflammation’s effects on aging. With its products such as Dior Prestige La Crème and L’Or de Vie, Dior said it has been able to work on a few of aging hallmarks.
“We want to accelerate in this field and share the [related] science around the world,” said Couturaud.
The ultimate goal is to develop cosmetics formulas capable of working on all 12 hallmarks to maintain youthful skin function or return it to a youthful state.
“It is a new hope for our skin,” she said.
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