Allison Wild

Allison Wild is the founder and managing director of Oxford Biosciences, its Chief Cosmetic Product Safety Assessor, and the Clinical Pharmacologist whose name stands behind the company’s safety assessments. She read Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Oxford, completing her MSc with distinction, and has worked in cosmetic safety science since 2006.

A Cosmetic Product Safety Report is a reasoned judgement about how a substance behaves in contact with the human body. Clinical pharmacology is the science of exactly that, how chemicals are absorbed, distributed, metabolised and how they act, which makes Clinical pharmacology the ultimate qualification for the work.

Allison founded Oxford Biosciences in 2013 on a straightforward premise: that the safety assessment behind a Cosmetic Product Safety Report is a scientific judgement, not a paperwork exercise. It demands fluency in cosmetic chemistry and in human physiology, and the laboratory and product experience to apply both. It was the unique combination of all three in one expert that Oxford Biosciences was built on. In the years since, she has overseen the assessment of more than 62,000 products now legally on the market, for over 5,000 brands, from single-founder studios to multinationals. The work is rarely a one-off: most clients return for product after product, which is the surest sign that the assessments are trusted and the relationship is built to last.

The work

Allison’s day-to-day practice is the substance of the discipline: exposure modelling, toxicological risk assessment under Annex I of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, and the reasoned conclusions that have to withstand scrutiny from the UK Office for Product Safety and Standards, the competent authorities of the EU member states, and the US Food and Drug Administration. Oxford Biosciences also prepares Toxicological Risk Assessments compliant with the US FDA Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA), so that a single brand can be supported across the UK, EU and US markets from one assessor’s desk.

The firm operates three in-house laboratories for analytical and compliance testing, and Allison sets the standard the laboratory and formulation work are held to. Her practice spans every cosmetic product category and every age group, and includes specialist questions that sit at the edge of the regulation, among them the inhalation hazards of aerosol formulations containing aluminium and nanoparticles, applied close to the face and airways. She leads the firm’s teams both in the lab and in the office.

Expert witness

Where product safety questions reach litigation, Allison acts as an expert witness, instructed by solicitors acting for both claimants and defendants. Oxford Biosciences offers this as a formal service. Her value in these matters is the same as in an everyday assessment: a clear, evidence-led account of what a formulation can and cannot do, and a rigorous critique of the opposing analysis.

Her instructions have spanned alleged product-related injury, ingredient and packaging compatibility, and the analysis of where a formulation or manufacturing process has failed. The detail of each matter remains confidential to the parties and their advisers.

Background and training

Allison’s route to cosmetic safety science was an unusual one. She began her undergraduate studies in computer science and mathematics at the University of Toronto, and was headhunted by Dun & Bradstreet as the only candidate with hands-on knowledge of the IBM PC XT, then newly arrived on the market. A first career in systems analysis and software engineering followed, across international corporate environments, before she returned to the bench and built a research and product-development practice in phytopharmaceutical and cosmetic formulation. That work led, in 2013, to the founding of Oxford Biosciences.

She holds an MSc with distinction in clinical pharmacology and experimental therapeutics from the University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division, and a BA awarded magna cum laude from Brown University, where she completed her degree after resuming her undergraduate studies at Harvard and then moving to Brown by choice. She wanted to be taught directly by professors rather than graduate students, a standard of rigour she was already setting for herself. Her continuing professional development has taken in clinical pharmacology, clinical biochemistry, analytical chemistry, phytopharmacology and formulation science, through institutions in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France and the United States.

Research

Allison’s scientific background is grounded in original clinical and laboratory research. She designed a novel plant-derived therapeutic that showed activity against sensitive and monoresistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, demonstrating efficacy in a proof-of-concept study. As Chief Investigator she designed and ran a clinical study determining, for the first time in humans, the absolute bioavailability of carvacrol, and developed and validated an HPLC method for quantifying phenols in human plasma to support it. Her published and presented work spans the pharmacokinetics of thymol, pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic modelling of d-limonene as an anticancer agent, and a meta-analysis on the differential diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.

Teaching

Since 2013 Allison has taught short courses on complying with the legal requirements of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, in Oxford and London.

Professional memberships

• British Pharmacological Society
• Society of Cosmetic Scientists (SCS)
• The Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA)