Buying Your New Face

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So will Allergan. After buying up Inamed, minus Reloxin, it formed a separate medical-aesthetics division. Part of its mission, according to its head, Robert Grant: to build "a total facial-rejuvenation portfolio" that can capitalize on Allergan's Botox-driven market reach. "This is an opportunity to create a new category which will have legs not just for the next decade but for the next 100 years," he says.

• MEDICAL DEVICES: Heating Up

Baby boomers want to look as young as they feel but don't want to look like they've had work done. "They don't want a pulled version of themselves," says Brandt, who claims that he uses more Botox and Restylane than any other dermatologist.

How about a baked version? The latest trend is medical devices that use new noninvasive technologies that produce natural-looking results and let patients get back to work quickly. On the table: tools that use radio frequencies (Thermage), plasma gas (Portrait), infrared light (Titan), light-emitting diodes (GentleWaves), pulsed light (Palomar Medical Technologies' Lux system) and lasers (Fraxel, Vbeam) to smooth out and tighten the skin and soften the appearance of wrinkles. Syneron's eMax uses radio frequencies and light energies and costs about $175,000. According to Shiu-Yik Au, an analyst for Millennium Research Group, the market for aesthetic medical equipment will top $400 million this year, a 30% increase from 2005. He projects it could more than double by 2010.

That explains why the venture vultures are circling. According to Allan Will, chairman of Split Rock Partners, a VC group based in Menlo Park, Calif., the attraction is the speed to market, compared with, say, a surgical device. Clinical costs for a cardiovascular tool, for example, could reach $70 million, and it could take six years before it's marketable; for an aesthetics device, the costs and time frame are half that.

For the companies that make the devices, it's also a profitable proposition. Consider Reliant Technologies, a privately held company in Mountain View, Calif., known for its popular resurfacing laser, Fraxel. Its newest model, Fraxel SR1500, which lets dermatologists treat deeper layers of skin, sells for $110,000. Orders have been pouring in, but the revenue stream doesn't stop there. The handheld device requires a special tip that needs to be replaced after four to six treatments. Cost per tip: $400. "It is a great business model," says Reliant vice president of global sales Keith J. Sullivan, with a grin.

Even though the various treatments work slightly differently, they operate on a similar principle: they deliver heat energy to the skin's deeper layers, which essentially damages the layers on top, triggering a healing process that produces newer skin underneath. "You need to basically wound the skin, so you can get a healing response," says Keith Penny, director of research for Rhytec, a firm that makes Portrait PSR, a device that treats wrinkles with plasma gas.

Today's lasers and other energy-based treatments are increasingly nonablative, meaning they're kinder and gentler to the patient. Portrait, for example, leaves the top layers of skin initially intact and a little red. As healthier skin emerges, peeling occurs. But the process takes days, not weeks, and the result: a dramatic tightening effect around the eyes and jawline, according to Dr. Fitzpatrick.