The Future of Aesthetics Is Already Here (And Most People Are Missing It)

I went to the Aesthetics Tech Forum expecting another medical conference. What I got was a front-row seat to the future being built in real time.

In this episode, I'm breaking down 9 companies that are completely rethinking aesthetics - lab-grown fat grafts, injectable elastin, AI that understands patient psychology, and needle-free delivery systems. These aren't just incremental improvements. They're asking fundamental questions about how we approach aging and beauty.

Here's what made this different: I wasn't stuck in the usual echo chamber of plastic surgeons. I was talking to software engineers, venture capitalists, and Korean beauty entrepreneurs. That cross-pollination is where real innovation happens.

The big shifts: aesthetics is merging with longevity science. We're moving from "cover it up" to "regenerate at the cellular level." And most people - even at a cutting-edge tech conference - still don't see what's coming.

Whether you're in the industry or just curious about the future of beauty and anti-aging, this episode shows you what everyone else is missing.

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of "The Beauty Standard" with Dr. Roy Kim! If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your support helps us continue to bring you the latest insights in aesthetic medicine and beauty trends.

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Join us next week as we explore another fascinating topic in the world of beauty, and remember: your body, your choice, your standard!

Transcript

A Cocktail Party Wake-Up

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm at this cocktail party. It's the first night of a conference I've never been to before. I'm talking to this guy in a really nice suit, and we're having a good conversation about the aesthetics industry. After about five minutes, I ask him, What brings you here? He replies, I'm the ambassador of Canada. So I literally stopped mid-sip of my water and I asked him, Why are you here? And he continues, There are over twenty five Canadian companies at this conference. And that's when I realized I wasn't just at another medical conference. I was watching the future of aesthetics getting built in real time.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Welcome to the Beauty Standard with Dr. Roy Kim.

The AI Hype And Vibe Coding

Three Shifts Reshaping Aesthetics

How Companies Were Selected

Oris AI: Empathetic Consults

Athenia Bio: Lab-Grown Fat

BEMI: Personalized Growth Factors

GetHairMD: Multimodal Hair Care

Tempo: Scaffolding Over Fillers

AIVIVA: Scar Modulation

TrueElastin: Injecting Elasticity

Rapalogics: Topical mTOR

ProTransit: Needle-Free Delivery

Big Questions And Next Decade

Get Outside The Echo Chamber

Closing And Invitation

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Hi, you've reached the Beauty Standard with Dr. Roy Kim. And today I wanted to talk to you about the nine companies that are potentially going to change everything we know about aging, beauty, and regeneration. But more importantly, I want to talk to you about why most people, even at the cutting edge of technology, still don't see what's coming. The meeting I was at was the Aesthetics Tech Forum, and it's organized and run by a company or organization called Octane OC. Octane OC is based in Orange County, and their overall job is to help businesses in Orange County launch and grow. This specific conference really is for aesthetics. It brings an unusual mix of plastic surgeons, other aesthetic providers, venture capitalists, biotech founders, nurses, marketers, and even pharmaceutical representatives. And here's what makes this conference very special. I spend most of my time at, well, plastic surgery conferences. Same people, same conversations, and sort of the same echo chamber. We talk about techniques, argue about approaches, and we share complications. But ATF, I'm talking to a software engineer about AI, then a venture capitalist about market dynamics, then a Korean skincare entrepreneur about cultural differences and beauty standards. That cross-pollination, that's where the interesting things happen. You know how they say you're the average of five people you spend the most time with? Well, industries work the same way. If you only talk to people who think like you, you miss the curveballs coming from completely different directions. Here's the thing that kept bothering me throughout this conference. Everyone was talking about AI. Every panel, every conversation, every company pitch. AI for patient engagement, for drug discovery, for marketing automation, and AI everywhere. But I am still pretty convinced that 99% of the people there, including the smartest and the brightest and the most successful, still don't fully grasp what's about to happen. Let me give you an example. There's this thing happening right now called vibe coding. You describe what you need in plain English, and AI writes custom software for your specific business need, not in months or hours. Sometimes it takes minutes. So think about this. The software that would have required you to hire developers, manage a project, deal with bugs, going through multiple iterations, cannot be created over lunch. And this is what I realized. The people who are going to win in the next few years aren't necessarily the smartest or the most experienced. They're the ones who can clearly articulate problems, who can read correctly and wisely, and who can connect ideas from different domains. If you can't organize your thoughts, and if you don't read and you're sort of stuck in thinking narrowly or within your niche, you're probably going to be left behind. And I don't mean this to sound harsh. I mean this as a wake-up call, for myself included. These tools are about to get even more powerful, but they're only as good as a person thinking about them and using them. Let me tell you about three massive shifts happening in aesthetics right now. First, aesthetics isn't just about looking good anymore. It's about cellular health, longevity, and feeling good from the inside out. People are saying, I just don't want to look 40 when I'm 60. I want my cells to actually be healthier. I want to be a better biologic and chronologic age underneath. So this convergence of beauty and wellness, I don't think is a trend. I think it's a fundamental shift in what we're selling. Second, regenerative medicine is exploding. We're not just treating symptoms of aging anymore, we're actually trying to regenerate tissue. Stem cells, exosomes, growth factors, tissue scaffolds, heck, even fat. We're moving from covering it up to fixing it at the source. Third, Korea continues to dominate the global conversation about beauty innovation. And I don't mean K-pop or just sheet mass. I mean RD, novel ingredients, sophisticated delivery systems. Every other conversation at this conference seemed to reference K-beauty. People are trying to understand what makes that ecosystem so innovative. Between this conference and my own trips to Korea, I'm learning that American Aesthetics has something to learn from how Korea thinks about beauty and science. Before I dive into these nine companies, let me give you some context about how this works. These nine weren't just random picks. The nine I'm talking about were selected to present at the ATF conference because they're at a specific stage. They're fairly mature, they're pretty developed, they're ready to scale, and they're actively looking for investor capital to ramp up. So this is more of a showcase moment. The pitch to VCs, PE firms, and strategic partners who can help them go from promising technology to market domination. That's what these nine companies are presenting for. But here's what's important to understand: there are dozens of other companies at this conference. Early stage startups who are looking for the first round of funding, business owners or business developers with IDs on napkins looking for technical co-founders, established companies exploring partnerships, and people just trying to figure out what's next. The whole ecosystem was there. Now, will all nine of these companies become the next biotech unicorns? Probably not. That's just the reality of innovation. Most companies don't make it, even the promising ones of solid science. But here's what matters: the trends they represent are real and accelerating. AI integration, AI integration across every aspect of aesthetic practice, from patient engagement to clinical decision making. Using your own biological tissue, literally your own cells, your own growth factors, your own fat, to regenerate and rejuvenate rather than relying on synthetic materials. The shift from treating symptoms to actually regenerating tissue at the cellular level. Delivery systems that eliminate needles and make treatments accessible to people who would never walk into a medical office. The convergence of longevity science with aesthetic medicine, targeting fundamental aging mechanisms rather than just surface level cosmetics. These trends aren't going away. They're going to define the next decade of aesthetics. So even if specific companies pivot, fail, or get acquired, the direction is clear. The train is starting to leave the station, and the only question is whether you're on it. Okay, so let me walk you through the nine companies that presented. These aren't the only ones, but they do represent where the industry is headed. Number one is Oris AI. Most AI chatbots really treat a consultation like booking a restaurant. You know, quick, transactional, done, that's sort of what they're doing as an AI chatbot. But this is what Oris understands. Deciding to change your appearance is emotional, it's psychological. There is vulnerability as well as hope mixed with fear. Consumers aren't just booking an appointment. They're taking a step forward towards becoming a better version of themselves. Their AI agent meets people at that moment, sometimes on the website at an unusual hour, and instead of just getting a contact form, they have a real conversation. They get educated, they have concerns addressed, and they're guided towards this sort of sales funnel, if you will, but I think more towards a consultation before they're actually going to book the consultation. I think there's a difference between just automation versus understanding human psychology. Oris is more optimized for empathy. Number two is a tenia bio. So this one is very interesting and actually can make my job obsolete. The pitch is if you take one CC of fat from a patient, a very tiny amount, and you send it to their lab, they will grow it into approximately a thousand CCs of the patient's own fat. As a plastic surgeon, my immediate reaction was wait, this completely changes fat harvesting and fat grafting. Because right now, fat harvesting requires actual liposuction, it requires actual surgery. Dermatologists typically don't do it. You need to be a surgeon to be able to harvest fat. But if a dermatologist can take a very tiny sample, send it to the lab, and give back a liter or a thousand cc's of engineered product, that need to have a surgical fat harvest has just totally gone away. So this is how disruption works. Not by being better at what you do, but by making what you do accessible to people who couldn't do it before. Is this going to work? I don't know. I mean, some of the questions I have are: does the engineered fat really behave the same as fat that's native to a patient? What's the take rate, the absorption rate? How does the body respond long term? I think these are real questions. But the fact that it makes me slightly uncomfortable means I should probably be paying attention. Next up, BEMI Cosmetics, spelled B as a boy EMY. Everyone talks about personalized skincare, but this takes it one better. They take a tissue sample from behind your ear from the patient. They culture the actual cells from the patient in their lab, and then they ship out skincare containing the patient's own individual growth factors. So it's the patient's biology with the patient's growth factors sent back in a small tube. They use mRNA technology, yes, the same one that they use for the vaccines for cosmetics. Now, the question is, does this level of personalization actually matter clinically? Because growth factors at skincare aren't new. But growth factors from your own individual cells, that's totally never been done before. I do think that this is the future of premium skincare. And of course, only time will tell, but it does work. Number four is GitHair MD. Hair loss is one of those problems where people try everything and nothing really works. We of course have monoxidyl, finasteride, PRP, laser therapy, et cetera. What GitHair MD does is pretty simple. The answer isn't one thing, but how about the right combination or the everything combination that has evidence behind it? They're building a physician-supervised network of in-reality brick and mortar offices. They want to have 70-plus locations which offer multimodal treatment. In other words, not surgery, not hair replacement, but lasers, bioelectric simulation, genetic testing, personalized topicals, personalized medication, personalized topicals and medication, and more. Plus, they're actually developing their own proprietary laser specifically for hair stimulation. This sort of mirrors what we've seen across aesthetics, the move from single intervention to, hey, we're going to treat one thing, but we're going to treat it really, really well. We don't treat facial aging with just Botox or just filler. We sort of combine the modalities. And this is where GetHairMD is applying that philosophy to hair loss. The challenge is execution at a larger scale. Can they maintain the quality across multiple locations and will they actually get multiple locations? We will soon find out. Number five on the list is Tempo Therapeutics. If you've injected fillers long enough, you've seen the disasters, including nodules, movement, tissue reactions, pillow face, etc. Tempo is approaching facial volume from a completely different angle. Instead of injecting something that occupies space, they're actually creating internal scaffolding. So right now, current fillers work by displacement as well as sort of giving G prime or structure to an area. Tempo therapeutics actually wants to create the architecture or internal scaffolding that provides mechanical lift and not just volume. Can they do it without the complications of traditional fillers? I do think they can, but I don't know what the adoption rate will be. The overall concept is sound and they have a very interesting solution, so I'm rooting for them. Next up is Aviva Biopharma. That's spelled AI V I V A. So this is every surgeon's annoyance and pretty much every plastic surgeon's patient's annoyance as well. I do great surgery, the patient takes care of themselves, but they develop scar tissue. AIViva is developing an injectable that reduces scar tissue beneath the skin. It's an injectable, it targets collagen activity. So right now we sort of treat scars after they form, including steroid injection, laser, microneedling with exosome, surgical revisions, and so on. But for prevention, we really don't have wonderful tools. If AI Viva can modulate the wound healing response, that would be transformative. Not just for surgery, but they're also looking into other aesthetic aggressive treatments as well. So for laser remodeling, they're looking at it not just for surgery, but also sort of smaller surgeries like skin cancers, things of that nature. The interesting thing is that laser resurfacing, microneedling, radio frequency, they all trigger wound healing. And if we can control the wound healing response better, we should be able to push treatments harder with a little less risk. Controlling scar tissue is without a doubt one of the holy grown problems in plastic surgery. If they can solve it or solve a big chunk of the puzzle, that's pretty major. Next up is true elastin. You may of course realize when we're doing fillers and we're injecting them, we're injecting typically synthetic materials. However, your skin has two key structural proteins, collagen and elastin. We obsess over collagen, but what if we can inject elastin as a filler? Elastin is what gives skin its bounce, that snapback quality that young skin has. As you age, elastin degrades and your body doesn't effectively replace it. True elastin is developing an injectable elastin. So it's not a collagen simulator, it's not a volumizer, it's actual elastin. The science is pretty complicated. Elastin is a tricky protein, but if they can pull this off, that would be really, really interesting. Next up is Rapologics. So there is a little nerdiness or science behind this company and product. So there's a protein called mTOR, and that regulates cellular metabolism and aging. One part of this system, TORC1, becomes overactive as we age. Rapamycin, which is an mTOR inhibitor, seems to extend lifespan in every species we've ever tested. The problem is that it's an overall immunosuppressant, so we just can't take it as an anti-aging pill. But this company is developing a topical serum that modulates mTOR. So that means that they're taking the longevity out of the research lab, putting it into a bottle, and making your skin reverse in aging. So this is not a peptide, it's not an antioxidant, it's really not like anything else. It's really trying to modulate the m-TOR response. So, does it actually penetrate? Can they achieve meaningful modulation just using it topically? Does it work in most humans or all humans? We're soon going to find out. Finally, the last company that presented was ProTransit Medical. Their premise is very interesting because what if you don't need a needle? Because ProTransit is developing nanocarriers that transport molecules across the skin and release the inside of the nanocarriers on the other side of the skin. If something can fit inside the carrier or package, it can be delivered. That means there's no injection. Their platform can deliver active molecules for up to 192 hours, and they do penetrate deeper than traditional topical creams or lotions. So as you know, the main problem is the skin to barrier. This is why we inject filler. This is why we inject it where we want. However, if you can use this technology to deliver skin rejuvenating, skin anti-aging, skin healing molecules, but you don't need an injection, that's a lot easier for the patient. Also, it's easier for the patient to actually consistently on an everyday basis apply these molecules. Lots of so this is the skepticism. I mean, lots of companies have claimed to solve skin penetration. But if ProTransit actually pulls this off and they can deliver molecules which are bigger than average, that would be a really, really transformative technology. So for the big picture regarding these nine companies, they're not just making incremental improvements. They're asking fundamental questions of, what if we could grow fat instead of harvest it? What if we can inject elastin instead of volumizers? What if we didn't need needles at all? That's how real innovation starts. Not by making existing solutions a little better, but by questioning whether we're solving the right problem in the first place. I do think that in terms of aesthetics, right now we're at an inflection point, because AI is about to make personalized medicine, drug discovery, scalable. Regenerative medicine, it sort of exists today, but more and more products and techniques and technologies are going to occur in the next couple of years. I do think the barrier between beauty and longevity is dissolving. And companies from unexpected places, not just Orange County, but Korea and from and companies from unexpected places, yes, they're presenting in Orange County, but they're from all over the world, can teach us new ways to think about innovation. Should you go to the ATF, the Aesthetics Tech Forum? If you're building something, absolutely. If you're investing in the space, definitely. And if you're a practitioner who wants to see what's coming before it arrives, yes. But more importantly, regardless of whether you go to this specific conference or not, you get to go outside your bubble. You talk to people who think differently than you. They've read widely, and it should encourage you to read widely as well. So stay curious, read about different things, and the next big disruption in your field probably won't come from inside your field unless you're reading, connecting with others, or maybe the next big disruption will come from someone outside your field. The world of aesthetics is changing very fast, and the question for you is are you watching it change or are you helping it change? Thanks for listening, and I will see you the next time on the Beauty Standard with Dr. Roy Kim.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

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