Last year I was asked if I wanted to write an article for a special edition of the International Journal of Cosmetic Science which was to be celebrating the career of the well known skin research Professor Tony Rawlings. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Tony on a couple of occasions, and I’d like to think I learned a lot from him (although perhaps not as much as I should have). In my early days at P&G working on skin I got involved with what was at the time a relatively new technique – In-vivo Confocal Raman Spectroscopy of skin. This is a device which allows optical profiles of different chemicals within the Stratum Corneum, painlessly and quickly and without the need to cut biopsies out of people. After all my time and experience in the dermatology field I strongly believe that this is the most powerful tool for understanding skin to have arisen in a long time.
However, instead of just one article though I decided that two would be better. One article was to be about the development of In-vivo Confocal Raman Spectroscopy into a clinical tool which was something I was involved in back in 2004, in the early days of my research into skin. The other was to be a report on a study assessing a wide range of skin assessment methods, biophysical, spectroscopic and grading, to see how they compare for looking at dry skin and how Raman Spectroscopy provided new insight into it. This was something I ran back in 2006-7 but was never published at the time, however is a paper I’ve wanted to publish for a long time. Tony was involved with and provided many tough questions during the development of the Confocal Raman system for looking at skin, so this edition of the IJCS seemed like the right place to have this published. Despite it being a (good) few years since this was run, the techniques for looking at the skin remain fundamentally the same, so I thought it still warranted publishing.
I worked on these articles with Paul Matts, a friend and colleague of mine from my days in the Skin Care group of P&G and also intimately involved with the development of Confocal Raman Spectroscopy for the measurement of skin, and am excited to say they have just been published in the IJCS. Links below;
In vivo confocal Raman spectroscopy: The window into the skin
I understand they are going to be open for anyone to download, but if you are having issues accessing them and want to have a copy please contact me through the tab at the top of the site.
Congratulations Tony, what an amazing career and legacy. You’re a skin legend……