The science behind L’Oréals new skincare gadget

Las Vegas is punishingly dry. The arid winter air means I woke up on Day 3 of CES 2025 with a nosebleed, chapped lips, and ashy legs. This in spite of the fact I slathered myself with two pumps of a fermented bean essence, eye cream, moisturizer, and a lip mask. Staring at my face in the hotel mirror, I wonder if any of those products were doing what they’re supposed to — and if maybe, I should try something different.

This is why I was so eager to try L’Oréal’s Cell BioPrint.

For anyone who’s struggled with their complexion, the Cell BioPrint feels like a holy grail gadget. The device is a mini-lab setup that analyzes a skin sample to generate a report about your skin’s current condition. It’ll also “grade” your skin with regard to oiliness, wrinkles, skin barrier function, pore size, and uneven skin tone. Based on the proteins in your skin, you’ll also see whether you’re more likely to be susceptible to those issues down the line — even if they aren’t issues now. The test also determines whether you’re responsive to retinol, a popular and well-studied skincare ingredient that nevertheless causes a ton of confusion online.

In my demo, using the Cell BioPrint was simple. Mainly because I didn’t have to do a thing. While L’Oréal hopes to one day make Cell BioPrint an at-home device, it’ll first be aimed at retail, dermatology offices, and skincare clinics. As in, the actual test will be done by a professional to ensure accuracy. A L’Oréal staffer collected a sample from both my cheeks using a special kind of sticker. I watched as he then dissolved it in a buffer liquid, placed the resulting solution into a cartridge, and fed that cartridge into a machine. I also had my cheeks and forehead scanned with an imaging wand before answering two questions about my age and demographic data.

After a few minutes, I got to see my results. Apparently, I’m doing something right because the report said that my chronological and biological age were aligned. But it also said that while my skin barrier function is currently good, I’m biologically prone to have issues with that as I get older. My report also said that I don’t have to be concerned with pore size — either now or in the future, and that I am highly responsive to retinol, meaning my skin is likely to tolerate it well.

There were several other insights I won’t bore you with, but after going over my results, I have a better sense of what I need to focus on. For instance, I should continue using moisturizers with ceramides, button up my sun care habits outside of sunscreen, add a vitamin C to help with my skin tone, and add a retinol. I also know what I don’t need or can remove from my routine. For example, I don’t need to buy products targeted toward shrinking pores.

Most of this wasn’t surprising. My results aligned with the concerns I’ve noticed and where I tend to concentrate my skincare routine. For example, the few times I’ve tried retinol, I’ve never had an hint of the sensitivities other people seem to experience.

Of course, this kind of personalized recommendation is only as good as the science behind it. After all, lots of health and beauty tech companies promise the moon, but are intentionally coy when it comes to explaining why you should trust them. Barring regulatory certification (which isn’t generally required for wellness and beauty tech), it’s left up to the individual to try to discern whether an explanation passes the smell test.

With that in mind, I asked L’Oréal to dive deep into the science — which Guive Balooch, global vice president of L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator, happily obliged.

Balooch says the company had 800 biologists working (and publishing clinical studies) to discover whether there are specific proteins expressed in skin cells that could determine your risk factors for certain skin conditions. The challenge, he says, is that there are a lot of proteins produced by the body. Finding the few out of the thousands that can give actionable skincare insights is like finding a handful of needles in a giant haystack. It required L’Oréal’s researchers to sequence all of them and then find the relevant biomarkers.

This particular branch of research, Balooch says, is called proteomics — or the study of how proteins are expressed in the body. “It’s understanding that our cells every day are making proteins. Depending on our lifestyle, our geography, and our genes, they will make more or less of these proteins. It changes over time and habits can change it as well.”

Balooch says L’Oréal tested 4,000 people over 10 years across the US, Europe, South America and Asia, and found five proteins related to skin health, including two that are related to how well a person’s skin will respond to retinol. And while the Cell BioPrint can only currently analyze responsiveness to retinol, other ingredients like niacinamide and hyaluronic acid are also in the works.

Cynically speaking, a device like this could also be viewed as a pseudoscientific way to sell more products to a group of people already prone to reach for their wallets. But Balooch argues the Cell BioPrint isn’t meant to encourage people to buy more.

“In some ways, it’s meant to tell people what not to buy,” he says. “Of course, we would love to sell more products, but not by overconsumption. That’s not actually good for your skin. It’s about helping people find the right products based on science.”

To that end, Balooch has a point. The skincare market right now is rife with misinformation and influencers pushing expensive 10-step routines that sometimes do more harm than good. I know better, and yet I’m as guilty as the next skincare nerd. (I’m still haunted by the full bottle of snail mucin influencers claimed would fix all my problems. It broke me out instead.) Even now, I know that I’ll probably get influenced again. The difference is at least I can choose to be influenced towards a retinol cream or vitamin C serum — things that have a higher chance of helping me — rather than throwing my money to the wind.