Is skin a poor polymer?
28 April 2010
By Guest Blogger Professor Steven Abbott
My experience in life is that the best things happen by accident. That’s how I got to know Syntopix. We met through my role as a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds where I do work on nanofluidics and biomimetic structures. The initial discussions were interesting but for various reasons led to nothing. However, I happened to mention that I thought that the basic model of how skin permeation works was fundamentally wrong and that as a chemist I see skin as a rather poor barrier whose diffusion properties are best explained via classical polymer diffusion. Now most cultures resent ignorant outsiders expressing such wild opinions. But Syntopix called my bluff. “OK”, they said, “let’s see if your ideas stack up against the real world”.
6 months later we’re still working together. And it’s been a huge learning experience for both sides. I remain convinced that the “skin as a poor polymer” analogy is very helpful. Using my expertise in Hansen Solubility Parameters and applying them to skin in the same way that I apply them to other important barrier issues (e.g. the right choice of gloves for protection against chemicals) we seem to be creating fecund formulating hypotheses. On the other hand, whilst it’s OK for me to say as a chemist “use chemicals X, Y and Z in this formulation” I’ve had to have a crash course in how (rightly) restrictive the rules are for chemicals that are going to go on human skin – and that’s before starting on issues like looking, feeling and smelling good when applied in the real world. There is a vast area of expertise out there required before any mere chemist’s suggestion can become a real product.
And although I say that skin is a poor polymer I mean this only in the sense that its barrier properties are rubbish compared to a real polymer such as polyethylene or PET. What I’ve learned, of course, is that although it’s rubbish as an absolute barrier, it’s astoundingly smart in being the barrier that it needs to be – not too good and not too bad. And it can easily outsmart the formulation plans of people like me. But then if it were easy, the solutions would have been spotted long ago.
Of the many things I’ve learned working with Syntopix, one is the value of supporting each other as a team – even an outsider such as myself. When my first suggested formulation was an utter failure, I’d assumed I’d be kicked out of the door. But the Syntopix team assured me that the chances of anyone’s first formulation actually going straight to the target organism and specifically zapping it in a week were effectively zero. For all we knew, my part of the equation had worked wonderfully (with further work we now understand it’s fatal flaws!) and the bugs simply were refusing to cooperate. So they stuck with me.
But that required another side to Syntopix. From time to time I’m hauled in for a session entitled “Give me 10 good reasons why your ideas aren’t rubbish”. The team throw everything they can at me, and ask me to be just as critical of myself. These sessions are crucial to our working relationship. The aim is to end the session agreeing that idea X really is rubbish, idea Y has stood up to the test and, importantly, idea Z had a fatal flaw (see my previous paragraph) which we can readily fix. Syntopix is a relatively small company so its resources are precious. It cannot afford to waste them on dumb ideas. So we work together to decide which ideas really are dumb, so we can focus on the good ones. These “negative” sessions generally work out to be the most positive meetings of all. The fix we found for the fatal flaw seems to lead to all sorts of interesting possibilities – which would never have occurred to me if the team had not spotted the flaw in the first place.
Will I help them find a blockbuster product? I hope so – there are plenty of encouraging signs. But if success does come, it will only be because this extraordinary Syntopix team has worked so effectively to take my contribution and weave the other magic around it.
My experience in life is that the best things happen by accident. That’s how I got to know Syntopix. We met through my role as a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds where I do work on nanofluidics and biomimetic structures. The initial discussions were interesting but for various reasons led to nothing. However, I happened to mention that I thought that the basic model of how skin permeation works was fundamentally wrong and that as a chemist I see skin as a rather poor barrier whose diffusion properties are best explained via classical polymer diffusion. Now most cultures resent ignorant outsiders expressing such wild opinions. But Syntopix called my bluff. “OK”, they said, “let’s see if your ideas stack up against the real world”.
6 months later we’re still working together. And it’s been a huge learning experience for both sides. I remain convinced that the “skin as a poor polymer” analogy is very helpful. Using my expertise in Hansen Solubility Parameters and applying them to skin in the same way that I apply them to other important barrier issues (e.g. the right choice of gloves for protection against chemicals) we seem to be creating fecund formulating hypotheses. On the other hand, whilst it’s OK for me to say as a chemist “use chemicals X, Y and Z in this formulation” I’ve had to have a crash course in how (rightly) restrictive the rules are for chemicals that are going to go on human skin – and that’s before starting on issues like looking, feeling and smelling good when applied in the real world. There is a vast area of expertise out there required before any mere chemist’s suggestion can become a real product.
And although I say that skin is a poor polymer I mean this only in the sense that its barrier properties are rubbish compared to a real polymer such as polyethylene or PET. What I’ve learned, of course, is that although it’s rubbish as an absolute barrier, it’s astoundingly smart in being the barrier that it needs to be – not too good and not too bad. And it can easily outsmart the formulation plans of people like me. But then if it were easy, the solutions would have been spotted long ago.
Of the many things I’ve learned working with Syntopix, one is the value of supporting each other as a team – even an outsider such as myself. When my first suggested formulation was an utter failure, I’d assumed I’d be kicked out of the door. But the Syntopix team assured me that the chances of anyone’s first formulation actually going straight to the target organism and specifically zapping it in a week were effectively zero. For all we knew, my part of the equation had worked wonderfully (with further work we now understand it’s fatal flaws!) and the bugs simply were refusing to cooperate. So they stuck with me.
But that required another side to Syntopix. From time to time I’m hauled in for a session entitled “Give me 10 good reasons why your ideas aren’t rubbish”. The team throw everything they can at me, and ask me to be just as critical of myself. These sessions are crucial to our working relationship. The aim is to end the session agreeing that idea X really is rubbish, idea Y has stood up to the test and, importantly, idea Z had a fatal flaw (see my previous paragraph) which we can readily fix. Syntopix is a relatively small company so its resources are precious. It cannot afford to waste them on dumb ideas. So we work together to decide which ideas really are dumb, so we can focus on the good ones. These “negative” sessions generally work out to be the most positive meetings of all. The fix we found for the fatal flaw seems to lead to all sorts of interesting possibilities – which would never have occurred to me if the team had not spotted the flaw in the first place.
Will I help them find a blockbuster product? I hope so – there are plenty of encouraging signs. But if success does come, it will only be because this extraordinary Syntopix team has worked so effectively to take my contribution and weave the other magic around it.