Biography

Ryan MacArthur is a research scientist in the Assay Development and Screening Technologies (ADST) Laboratory within NCATS’ Division of Preclinical Innovation. He joined the NIH Chemical Genomics Center in 2007 as a research scientist after completing his postdoctoral work at North Carolina State University (NC State) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at NC State, MacArthur modeled line shapes of spin-labeled lipid systems, such as aligned bilayers and the yeast phospholipid transfer protein Sec14p, and helped construct a high-field magnetic resonance spectrometer. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he worked on spin-polarized spectra of transient free radicals associated with ultraviolet damage.

MacArthur received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale University, where he developed magnetic resonance methods to study the macromolecular structures of proteins containing metal-ion and free-radical co-factors.

Research Topics

In his current position, MacArthur supports the biophysical and data components of ADST projects to advance assay and screening technology. These projects include small molecule and biologic therapeutics.

He leads development of large-scale data processing frameworks, visualization of high-throughput screening (HTS) data, assay analysis strategies and related quality control metrics. Collaborating with researchers both inside and outside of NIH, he has co-authored publications exploring HTS methodologies using models such as malaria, cytochrome P450, luciferase and mammalian cell-based systems.

MacArthur aids in the development of acoustic dispensing screening applications, having published both co-titration synergy experiments in systems such as PMP22 expression and elution of media containing secreted reporters of gene expression. He also engages in the development and application of methodology to characterize the interactions of lead substances with target systems, using biophysical techniques such as surface plasmon resonance and analytical chromatography. In addition, he focuses on efforts to encode and deconvolute HTS information with chemical library pools and assay multiplexing methodologies, as exemplified by his contributions to publications on natural product libraries and a Parkinson’s model, using the coincidence reporter.