Dr. Anthony Rawlings: The Unilever years. 1988–2001

I first met Tony Rawlings in late 1988 when he joined Unilever Research Colworth House from working in the Cardiothoracic Research Unit at Liverpool Hospital. He was recruited into the fledgling Personal Products Research Section (PPRS), by Ian Scott the senior skin scientist at the time, to lead a project investigating skin lipids and desquamation. I had been recruited into PPRS the previous year, from another research group on the Colworth site to continue mechanistic understanding of filaggrin hydrolysis and build capability in measurement of the various components of the Natural Moisturizing Factor. Tony, and I worked together closely and became firm friends.

Although Tony had a background in lipid biochemistry, he was completely new to skin biology. He set about changing that dynamic with an energy, focus and drive that is as rare as it is commendable. To this day I have never met anyone who immersed themselves into the scientific literature as completely as did Tony. He didn't so much read the relevant scientific literature as devour it. The pile of reprints and photocopies on his desk grew exponentially, all with Tony's characteristic slivers of yellow Post-It® notes inserted from cover to cover, highlighting key data or key questions to be addressed. From a distance it looked as though a family of jaundiced porcupines had taken up residence on his desk. The Safety Inspector was not amused and declared that the gravity-defying piles of papers on Tony's desk were a fire hazard, and repeatedly told him to clear his workstation. Tony did. Tony took all his papers home. Ann (his wife) told me that their spare room/Tony's office, when she could squeeze through the door, began to resemble a dystopian Manhattan skyline. In all honesty it hasn't changed much over the past thirty years.

Halfway through the next year the Colworth House librarian declared that the budget for PPRS (for photocopying articles and obtaining reprints) had been exceeded. There was one major culprit. Nevertheless, Tony's rapid assimilation of skin literature and a keen ability to discern critical gaps in data and knowledge, as well as develop key insights soon began to bear fruit.

During the period 1989–1992 the research undertaken by Tony and his team began to bring new understanding of age-related and seasonal changes in the key barrier lipids of the stratum corneum: ceramides, cholesterol, and fatty acids, and how these changes contributed to susceptibility to surfactant damage and poor skin condition [1-3]. There were also insights into perturbations in corneodesmosomal hydrolysis [4] and routes to amelioration that would pave the way subsequently for a more detailed analysis of the spectrum of proteolytic activity in the stratum corneum.

However, Tony's contribution to PPRS and the Skin Category research programme went well beyond leading his group at Colworth House. He was instrumental in using his team's output and knowhow to forge new, stronger relationships with the Development and Marketing teams at Chesebrough Ponds Inc. (CPI) and Elizabeth Arden. Both companies had their headquarters in North America and were key players in Unilever's expanding Mass and Prestige skin care businesses. The Development teams were keen to utilize technologies proposed and patented by Tony, and craft novel claims around the new insights gained from his research. It was an exciting and hectic period for Tony and his team.

Not satisfied with his hard-earned understanding of skin lipids and the stratum corneum literature, Tony set about writing the first (of many) key reviews of the field in 1994 [5], that would be well received by academics and industry alike. Unilever senior management were not always convinced of the value of publishing such comprehensive documents. They argued that surely such learned tomes would be of benefit of our competitors. However, Tony convinced them it would enhance Unilever's skin care credibility and eventually he prevailed. Despite the effort and time involved I believe Tony found writing reviews cathartic, and an opportunity to order his voluminous notes and hone his thinking. The last review we coauthored together [6], is coming up for its 20th anniversary, and recently passed the 1000 citations. I was pleased, but Tony was over the moon with that milestone.

It was inevitable that when, in 1991, Unilever announced a major expansion of skin research capability at Unilever Research Laboratory Edgewater in New Jersey (to more closely support CPI and Elizabeth Arden) that Tony would be a key recruit. He left Colworth House in 1992 to take up the new position of Skin Condition Programme Manager at the Edgewater facility. Over the next three and a half years Tony and Ian Scott built a significant new capability in epidermal biology at Edgewater. Tony was at the very heart of the activity, recruiting new scientists, identifying novel skin care technologies, and always striving to ensure scientific insights into epidermal biology [7-9] were effectively married to innovative technologies, in order to create new opportunities for the business. Throughout his time at Edgewater Tony retained programme responsibility for the lipid barrier and desquamation work at Colworth House, and the success of that trans-Atlantic relationship peaked in 1994 when the joint USA-UK team won Best Poster at the IFSCC [10].

Primarily for family reasons Tony returned to the UK in 1996, leaving Unilever and joining Cussons International. However, his hiatus from Unilever was short-lived, and in 1997 Tony returned to Colworth House to head up the Cell Biology and Physiology group. This was a cross-category role (Unilever at that time had separate science bases to support the different categories within Personal Care e.g Skin Category, Hair Category, Deodorants Category). Once again Tony consumed himself with reading the scientific literature, this time with a much broader remit. He worked tirelessly to identify cross-category opportunities in Personal Care, including improvements in skin condition through nutritional routes, and built a strong, science base and a shared identity for the diverse group. With his family living 150 miles away in Manchester Tony spent the week housed in a basic apartment within the Gatehouse on the Colworth House estate. He continued to live and breathe science. The then Head of Laboratory, Dr. Alistair Penman, frequently working late at Colworth, wanted to know who the person was always burning the midnight oil in the Gatehouse, and possibly putting in more hours than himself. Guess who?

Of course, Tony's first love remained epidermal and stratum corneum biology, and he was instrumental in leveraging the skin lipids and desquamation expertise available at Colworth House to build new understanding of skin barrier function in both underarm skin biology [11, 12], and scalp health [13]. Both those research areas were based at the Unilever Research Laboratory Port Sunlight, and Tony took every opportunity to strengthen interactions between the two UK-based labs.

During this period Tony, Dr. Allan Watkinson, and I initiated a deeper investigation into stratum corneum proteases, their cognate inhibitors, and the transglutaminase family of enzymes. Through this work we increasingly began to view the stratum corneum, not as an inert barrier to water loss (the so-called ‘Saran-Wrap’ barrier) but rather as a dynamic, responsive tissue, a hydrolytic ‘hotbed’ if you will. The stratum corneum, was in some respects a sophisticated ‘Biosensor’, capable of responding to changes in the external environment to alter its maturation. The hydrolysis of filaggrin deeper in the stratum corneum, in response to changes in the external humidity had been established, earlier at Colworth House [14]. New observations by the team provided evidence that key desquamatory enzyme activity was also influenced by external relative humidity [15], and that the intrinsic structure and strength of corneocytes was being modified by transglutaminase, during corneocyte transit through the stratum corneum [16, 17]. It was an enlightening couple of years, that would have considerable implications for how this tissue would be viewed and researched in the future.

However, Tony was already looking for his next challenge. He had a strong desire to once again focus his efforts on a single Personal Care Category, and in September 1999 Tony moved from Colworth House to Port Sunlight to become Category Research Manager for the Deodorants Category. The next two years were equally hectic and Tony found himself immersed in the biology of apocrine and eccrine sweat glands [18], the chemistry of antiperspirants, masterminding ambitious grants to leverage EU fundings, and even robustly defending Deodorant products claims in court against aggressive competitor challenges.

When it became clear that Tony's ambition wasn't matched by career opportunities within Port Sunlight, he made the momentous decision to leave Unilever for a second time. His Unilever swansong was to mastermind and coordinate the Company's presence at the 2002 IFSCC meeting in Edinburgh where an unheralded (for Unilever) and ambitious number of scientific posters and platform presentations were accepted. It was testament to his professionalism and integrity, that despite leaving the Company, and striving to establish an identity as an independent consultant, that he continued to cajole and harass scientists to make sure their posters were ready for the conference, and that their content emphasized the strength and diversity of the global Unilever research programme.

Tony spent an interrupted eleven years at Unilever, working in three of the major research laboratories. He left an indelible signature across those research facilities through his sharp intellect, scientific acumen, and inclusive leadership style, that engendered both trust and strong loyalty in his teams.

However, for me personally his most outstanding achievement through that challenging eleven-year period was his scientific output. When he left Port Sunlight and Unilever in 2001 he had approaching 40 publications to his name and been granted a staggering 46 patents. These two figures are all the more impressive when you consider he was a senior research manager in a Fast-Moving Consumer Goods company with many, varied demands of his time.

Understandably, Tony was initially filled with considerable self-doubt about whether he was cut-out to be a consultant, but his friends and ex-colleagues were in no doubt that he would be successful. After all, who wouldn't want to work with the foremost authority on the structure and function of the stratum corneum, work with an individual with a labyrinthine network of contacts in academia and across the cosmetic industry, consult with a leading scientist with a proven track record of identifying novel, patentable, skin care actives, and listen to someone who has an intrinsic ability to guide the development of strong Personal Care credentials and scientific credibility?

Tony registered AVR Consulting Ltd. in April 2002. The rest, as they say, is history.

Tony, Ann, myself, and my wife Jane still get together a couple of times a year for dinner or a BBQ. Once all the excited chatter around children, grandchildren, cruises and holidays has subsided, Tony will update me on the running total for citations for our Dermatologic Therapy paper (currently 1084), and then we will slide unashamedly into reminiscing about the good (and bad) old days of Unilever. That can take quite a while, and of course, a discussion on our favourite biological interface, is, like the proteolytic cascades within the stratum corneum, always bubbling away just below the surface.