The third of four posts on alternative careers, based on presentations at the Source Event 2008

Life scientists considering a career in industry need not limit their imagination to big pharma and drug R&D pipelines. One avenue that might be attractive, in more sense than one, is the beauty industry. As Paul Matts revealed at the Source Event, it’s not all surface gloss—the sector requires technically skilled scientists and can be very rewarding. You might even get on TV.

Paul is a Research Fellow at Proctor & Gamble, where he’s worked for 20 years. By way of introduction, he gave a brief overview of his employer. Everyone knows that P&G is a company of sauropodic proportions, but 140,000 employees? Sales of $70 billion? 27,000 patents? It’s staggering. P&G own 22 billion-dollar-brands and make just about everything in your household cupboards—from Pringles to Pampers, Duracell to Gillette. If there’s ever a nuclear exchange, you want to be bunkered up in the P&G product warehouse.

What’s his role?

Paul works for his company’s R&D arm, which spends some $2 billion a year developing better products. Working in the skin care division, he’s particularly interested in anti-ageing cosmetics and, specifically, in developing new ways of ‘measuring skin’. He gave a flavour of one of his more recent projects— measuring pigment distribution.

As skin ages, it doesn’t just get more wrinkled and saggy, but also alters in tone. Skin tone is influenced by two pigments, melanin and haemoglobin, while the light-scattering collagen is the main determinant of dermal brightness. Paul’s team have developed novel imaging technology that can photograph and map the distribution of these three proteins across a human face, as demonstrated in his talk by a facial ‘melanin map’ of a middle-aged woman. Parts of the face most often in shadow (e.g. beneath hair) showed noticeably reduced melanin, while areas of higher blood flow such as the lips were richer in haemoglobin. Studying such patterns of pigment distribution is now helping P&G design more sophisticated anti-ageing cosmetics.

How did he get in and what’s it like?

Paul gained a PhD in microbial biochemistry at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Not long after, he applied for and was offered a role at P&G. “It was a big culture shock going from academia to big pharma. And I won’t lie, the first year was awful,” he admitted, noting that the change of location at the same time as getting married was also a big upheaval. But after switching projects and letting things settle down, he became enthused about the cosmetics industry. He’s now spent two decades working for the company in the skin-care division, and regularly gives educational talks on this oft-maligned trade.

Indeed, someone from the audience raised the inevitable question about the gobbledygook additive names we hear in commercials—pentapeptides, Boswellox, that kind of thing. Now, I bet there’s not a single person reading this who doesn’t cringe whenever these ads come on. Such commercials grate because they invoke bogus-sounding scientific terms to make a product seem more credible. Paul didn’t go into the marketing rationale behind such terminology, but reassured the audience that these additives do have a beneficial effect, as shown by double-blind studies published in quality peer-reviewed literature. (Sorry, I didn’t note down the refs, but they were certainly credible.)

Paul has appeared in a commercial or two himself as ‘a leading skincare expert’. On one occasion, he endorsed a product to half the US population during an ad break in the Oscars. He’s even featured on How To Look Good Naked. Not many Research Fellows can claim that.

And, in case you’re wondering, he doesn’t use a moisturiser thanks to naturally well-hydrated skin.

Got a question for Paul about the cosmetics industry? If so, speak up in the comments and I’ll see if I can get him to answer.