Ryan Lithgo

Ryan Lithgo is a PDRA working as part of a joint venture between Diamond Light Source and Cancer Research Horizons, and is responsible for providing X‑ray structural support for XChem fragment screening. He has a background in macromolecular crystallography, biochemistry, and biophysics.

Ryan completed his PhD at the University of Nottingham, focusing on the structural determination of the protein machinery involved in bacterial silver resistance. After completing his PhD, he joined a start‑up company, GyreOx, providing biochemical and biophysical support for testing novel heterocyclic peptides against their intended targets.

Before joining the Industrial Liaison group, Ryan joined the academic XChem team here at Diamond, working on the NIH‑funded ASAP grant as an X‑ray structural biologist. The grant's focus was pandemic preparedness, stemming from the COVID pandemic, with the aim of producing drug‑like molecules against future pandemic targets, using the XChem fragment screens as starting points.

Prior to working in biotech, Ailsa worked as a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Oxford and the Medical University of South Carolina and after completing her PhD at University of Bristol.