Rick Davies

Director of Protein Science and Structural Biology

Rick Davies has over 35 years experience of Protein Science and Structural Biology gained within the Pharmaceutical Industry

Rick Davies

More about Rick

Rick is a scientist with a passion for early drug discovery. He is a protein biochemist with 35 years of experience in Big Pharma, working on projects in all the major therapeutic areas. He begun working as a lab scientist in the early days of recombinant protein science, ‘fishing’ for protein targets, using classical biochemical methods with the aim of purifying protein to obtain a small piece of N-terminal sequence to enable recombinant expression. Rick then went on to lead teams expressing and purifying protein targets for use in 100s of drug discovery projects. His role subsequently expanded to include leading scientists developing biochemical assays and running chemical biology and proteomics experiments.

Rick has also led the successful technology transfer and implementation of DNA-encoded library screening at AstraZeneca and played a significant role in the building of a targeted degradation platform. Over recent years, Rick has been leading early small molecule drug discovery projects, with particular focus of novel Oncology targets.

In his spare time, Rick attempts to make music and is fairly obsessive about going to the gym!!

Osteikoetxea X, Silva A, Lázaro-Ibáñez E, Salmond N, Shatnyeva O, Stein J, Schick J, Wren S, Lindgren J, Firth M, Madsen A, Mayr LM, Overman R, Davies R, Dekker N
Engineered Cas9 extracellular vesicles as a novel gene editing tool
J Extracell Vesicles, 2022 May;11(5):e12225, doi: 10.1002/jev2.12225

Hendricks JA, Beaton N, Chernobrovkin A, Miele E, Hamza GM, Ricchiuto P, Tomlinson RC, Friman T, Borenstain C, Barlaam B, Hande S, Lamb ML, De Savi C, Davies R, Main M, Hellner J, Beeler K, Feng Y, Bruderer R, Reiter L, Molina DM, Castaldi MP
Mechanistic Insights into a CDK9 Inhibitor Via Orthogonal Proteomics Methods
ACS Chem Biol, 2022 Jan 21;17(1):54-67, doi: 10.1021

Rutten B, Young S, Aldridge S, Davies R, Fidock M, Newbold P, Singh D, Platt A, Hughes G
The commutability of enzyme linked immunosorbent assays for the quantification of serum eosinophil-derived neurotoxin (EDN), J Immunol Methods. 2022 Jan;500:113181. doi: 10.1016/j.jim.2021.113181

Ding M, Malhotra R, Ottosson T, Lundqvist M, Mebrahtu A, Brengdahl J, Gehrmann U, Bäck E, Ross-Thriepland D, Isaksson I, Magnusson B, Sachsenmeier KF, Tegel H, Hober S, Uhlén M, Mayr LM, Davies R, Rockberg J, Schiavone LH, Secretome screening reveals immunomodulating functions of IFNα-7, PAP and GDF-7 on regulatory T-cells, Sci Rep. 2021 Aug 18;11(1):16767. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-96184-z

Ding M, Tegel H, Sivertsson Å, Hober S, Snijder A, Ormö M, Strömstedt PE, Davies R, Holmberg Schiavone L,
Secretome-Based Screening in Target Discovery
SLAS Discov 2020 Jul;25(6):535-551., doi: 10.1177/2472555220917113. Epub 2020 May 19

Davies RA, Holmberg-Schiavone L, Hunt, J, The Development and Use of Protein and Protein-affinity Libraries for Phenotypic Screening, 2020 (Book Chapter), Phenotypic Drug Discovery, Royal Society of Chemistry

Hanna Tegel, Melanie Dannemeyer, Sara Kanje, Åsa Sivertsson, Anna Berling, Anne-Sophie Svensson, Andreas Hober, Henric Enstedt, Anna-Luisa Volk, Magnus Lundqvist, Mona Moradi, Delaram Afshari, Siri Ekblad, LanLan Xu, Malin Westin, Faranak Bidad, Lovisa Holmberg Schiavone, Rick Davies, Lorenz M Mayr, Sinead Knight, Sven O Göpel, Björn G Voldborg, Fredrik Edfors, Björn Forsström, Kalle von Feilitzen, Martin Zwahlen, Johan Rockberg, Jenny Ottosson Takanen, Mathias Uhlén, Sophia Hober
High throughput generation of a resource of the human secretome in mammalian cells
N Biotechnol. 2020 Sep 25;58:45-54

Nikki Heath, Xabier Osteikoetxea, Taiana Mia de Oliveria, Elisa Lázaro-Ibáñez, Olga Shatnyeva, Christina Schindler, Natalie Tigue, Lorenz M Mayr, Niek Dekker, Ross Overman, Rick Davies
Endosomal escape enhancing compounds facilitate functional delivery of extracellular vesicle cargo
Nanomedicine (Lond). 2019 Nov;14(21):2799-2814

Pavel Macek, Matthew J. Cliff, Kevin J. Embrey, Geoffrey A. Holdgate, J.Willem M.Nissink, Stanislava Panova, Jonathan P.Waltho, Rick A. Davies, Phosphorylation of Myc in the Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Inhibits Binding to Max and DNA via Destabilization of Transient -Helical Structures. 2018, submitted to Journal of Biological Chemistry

Holmberg Schiavone L, Davies RA, Ding M, Karlsson U, Malholtra R, Strömstedt M, Tegel H, Hober S, Sivertsson A, Uhlen M, Identification of secreted protein families that regulate the phenotype of disease relevant cells. 2018 (manuscript in preparation)

Rick A. Davies, Melanie Snow, Jonathan Renshaw, The use of Mass Spectrometry for the characterisation of proteins in small molecule drug discovery. 2017, European Pharmaceutical Review

Rick Davies, Ian Hardern, Ross Overman, 30 years of Protein Production for Small Molecule Drug Discovery. 2016, European Pharmaceutical Review

Murray PG, Read A, Banerjee I, Whatmore AJ, Pritchard LE, Davies RA, Brennand J, White A, Ross RJ, Clayton PE; Reduced appetite and body mass index with delayed puberty in a mother and son: association with a rare novel sequence variant in the leptin gene. 2011, Eur J Endocrinol.164(4):521-7

Gerhardt S, Abbott WM, Hargreaves D, Pauptit RA, Davies RA, Needham MR, Langham C, Barker W, Aziz A, Snow MJ, Dawson S, Welsh F, Wilkinson T, Vaugan T, Beste G, Bishop S, Popovic B, Rees G, Sleeman M, Tuske SJ, Coales SJ, Hamuro Y, Russell C.; Structure of IL-17A in complex with a potent, fully human neutralizing antibody. 2009, J Mol Biol. 394(5):905-21

Ward A, Anderson M, Craggs RI, Maltby J, Grahames C, Davies RA, Finch D, Pattison D, Oakes H, Mallinder PR; E. coli expression and purification of human and cynomolgus IL-15. 2009, Protein Expr Purif.; 68(1):42-8

Cowan RH, Davies RA, Pinheiro TT; A screening system for the identification of refolding conditions for a model protein kinase, p38alpha. 2008, Anal Biochem. 376(1):25-38

Creemers JW, Pritchard LE, Gyte A, Le Rouzic P, Meulemans S, Wardlaw SL, Zhu X, Steiner DF, Davies N, Armstrong D, Lawrence CB, Luckman SM, Schmitz CA, Davies RA, Brennand JC, White A; Agouti-related protein is posttranslationally cleaved by proprotein convertase 1 to generate agouti-related protein (AGRP)83-132: interaction between AGRP83-132 and melanocortin receptors cannot be influenced by syndecan-3. 2006, Endocrinology 147(4):1621-31

Brocklehurst KJ, Payne VA, Davies RA, Carroll D, Vertigan HL, Wightman HJ, Aiston S, Waddell ID, Leighton B, Coghlan MP, Agius L, Stimulation of hepatocyte glucose metabolism by novel small molecule glucokinase activators. 2004, Diabetes 53(3):535-41

Katy J Brocklehurst, Rick A Davies, Loranne Agius, Differences in regulatory properties between human and rat glucokinase regulatory protein. 2004, Biochem J. 378(Pt 2): 693–697