Å·ÃÀAV

Dr Chris Lawson was a distinguished industrial chemist who has left a lasting legacy in the field of glycoscience and carbohydrate chemistry. He was born in Lancaster to Quaker parents and he was educated at Bootham School in York. He then did his first degree in Chemistry at Edinburgh before joining Sir Dai Rees’ laboratory as a PhD student working on the chemistry and enzymology of marine and bacterial polysaccharides, including carrageenans.

In 1969 he joined Tate & Lyle Group Research Centre in Keston with the remit of investigating the properties and potential applications of polysaccharides derived from microorganisms, especially alginates. When the Research Centre relocated onto Reading University Campus in 1972 he led multidisciplinary teams on major projects including the study of the structure, function and applications of microbial polysaccharide gums resulting in the industrial scale production of xanthan gum. In 1989 he co-founded the carbohydrate company Dextra Laboratories in Reading and as joint CEO developed Dextra into a successful glycobiology company, dedicated to the production and supply of glycans with medical significance.

Chris was one of the early ones to realise the developing importance of oligosaccharides in medicine. Examples of this are the glycosylation of proteins that define bacterial pathogenicity and mutagenicity, oligosaccharides influencing wound healing, and a-galactose oligosaccharides that present difficulty in xenotransplantation of organs from animals to humans. He was one of those that saw the importance of sialic acid and sialoglycans which has most recently led to the Nobel prize winning work of Carolyn Bertozzi at Stanford.

In 2007, following the sale of Dextra to the Summit Corporation Chris formed a new company, Glycomix Ltd, a specialist company working in the area of polysaccharide chemistry. Glycomix was acquired by Biosynth/ Carbosynth in 2016 and he joined the company as a Senior Scientific Advisor, providing expert advice to customers on carbohydrate-related subjects and producing a range of technical marketing materials.

Chris was a dedicated carbohydrate chemist, writing about the subject he loved right up until he died. He had the uncanny knack of spotting an unrecognised marketing niche for oligosaccharides and this sharp awareness formed the basis of the launch of both his Dextra and Glycomix laboratories, dedicated to the supply of glycans with medical significance. Alongside this was the production of commercial carbohydrate catalogues containing a wealth of background information, seldom found in the usual commercial firm documents and providing invaluable reference data.

Chris was elected a Fellow of the Å·ÃÀAV and became an active committee member of the Å·ÃÀAV Carbohydrate Group and the Carbohydrate Division of the American Chemical Society Carbohydrate division and the Society of Chemistry in Industry. He had authored over 40 seminal publications, patents and book chapters whilst retaining throughout his earlier interest in the structure of marine and bacterial polysaccharides and how they could be used in combination. And the Dextra company which he co-founded still gives its name to a distinguished Å·ÃÀAV Medal.

His knowledge and enthusiasm – he was full of ideas and always wanted to chat about everything that was going on - will be very much missed. However, Chris’s handbooks on oligosaccharides and polysaccharides and more recently monosaccharides and nucleic acids (easily downloadable from the Biosynth web-site) will remain a lasting legacy and a must view tool for all researchers in carbohydrate chemistry for a very long time to come.

In addition to his passion for carbohydrate chemistry, Chris was very practical, always interested in how things work and spent many hours repairing or renovating many devices such as old radios. He had a keen interest in photography, building up an extensive archive of photographs, many of which he scanned from old negatives or slides. He had an eclectic taste in music, and enjoyed visiting art galleries.

Chris died peacefully with his family around him in a hospice on the 7 January 2025 aged 82. He is survived by his wife Lynn, sons Stephen and Ewan and grandchildren Ethan, George, Amelie, Harvey and Louis.