Prof Longley’s research is focussed on cancer therapy response and resistance. In particular, his work investigates the therapeutic relevance of the caspase 8 inhibitor FLIP and the inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs). His work has shown that FLIP and IAPs are key regulators of death receptor-, chemotherapy- and radiation-induced apoptosis in a range of cancers. His work has led to clinical trials exploring the use of IAP inhibitors in colorectal cancer, and his group has developed first-in-class inhibitors of FLIP. The FLIP inhibitor program was licenced to Ipsen Pharma in 2021 (largest licensing deal by any University in the UK that year) after 2 rounds of funding from The Wellcome Trust (~£10M) and is currently approaching candidate selection stage. Prof Longley was a UKRI Innovation Scholar for 3 years at Almac Discovery (2020-23), helping to licence one of their oncology-focussed small molecule inhibitor programmes. He is also a founder of the Cancer Vaccine spin-out company AilseVax (https://www.ailsevax.com/). Prof Longley is currently the Director of the Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research at Queen’s University Belfast.