The Science and Art of Longevity in Aesthetics

The 2025 Octane Aesthetic Tech Forum was a two-day meeting filled with innovation, expertise, and a peek into what the future holds for the aesthetic medicine industry. After opening remarks, the forum kicked off with a panel titled “The Science and Art of Longevity in Aesthetics.”

The panel, moderated by Modern Aesthetics® Editorial Board member Saranya Wyles, MD, PhD, FAAD, focused on why the study of aging is critical in understanding not only why and how we age but also in developing strategies to promote healthy longevity, delay age-related diseases, and improve quality of life in later years.

It was a discussion Octane CEO Bill Carpou said was “not just about the beauty of aging and looking good; it was so much more holistic” than that.

“It was really about inner beauty, but more importantly taking care of yourself and what I call ‘quality of life’,” Carpou said. “Who wants to live to be 100 or 110 and the last 20 years of your life you’re incapacitated? I’m really interested in those types of things that give you a longer high quality of life if you remain active and do a lot of different things, and of course look good all along.”

Kay Durairaj, MD, FACS, is founder of Beauty by Dr. Kay, and executive editor of Modern Aesthetics. As a panelist in the longevity talk, she explained what’s to come in aesthetic medicine.

“[One of] the things we’re going to continue to see in aesthetics is this focus on meeting patients where they are in their aging journey,” Dr. Durairaj said. “Even at age 20, your body is having aging changes in levels of cellular metabolism. Instead of just doing Botox and fillers, we need to start working on these other things like looking at biometric testing, nutriomics, looking at using the data from wearable devices, and giving people an actionable plan for how they can anti-age.”

Elizabeth Yurth, MD, FAARFM, ABAARM, is the co-founder and chief medical officer of Boulder Longevity Institute. She is a double board-certified physician in physical medicine and rehabilitation and anti-aging/regenerative medicine.

Since 2006, she has been providing “Tomorrow’s Medicine Today” to patients. She explained why it’s encouraging to see her field of longevity medicine merging with aesthetic medicine.

“I was actually thrilled to see longevity medicine get into the aesthetics world, because for a long time I think they’ve been a little bit too separate where you go in and get your face work done, get your Botox or fillers, and we don’t really look at internal health,” Dr. Yurth said. “And ultimately, you’ve got to, yes, look good, and all these things are beneficial, but you also have to have all the inside health. I was on that panel with just amazing women where they are all focused on that. Yes, they are in the aesthetic world, but they are looking and teaching about exercise and nutrition and hormones.”

Peptide therapy is something Dr. Yurth has expertise in.

“[Peptide therapies are] kind of new to this field,” Dr. Yurth said. “There are some peptides they have used in aesthetics for a little while, like GHK Copper, but we have all these other peptides that could be useful here, too.”

Stephanie Manson Brown, MD, MBBS, MRCS, is Vice President, Head of Clinical Development and Scientific Innovation for Allergan Aesthetics. The art of longevity is an area she has a “huge passion” for, and she told Modern Aesthetics looking at aging from a holistic point of view is one of the crucial takeaways from the panel.

“We need to make sure we are investing in the research to better understand aging so that we can make sure we are bringing in data—provide, evidence-based solutions that are going to provide options for a whole multitude of consumers and patients because one size doesn’t fit all,” Dr. Manson Brown said. “Therefore, there’s a great opportunity to really look at how we can potentially move toward personalized medicine.”

Written by Alyssa Adams, Dermatology & Beauty Editor