Richard Kennedy

Prof. Dr. Richard Kennedy is the Global Vice President and Medical Director at Almac Diagnostic Services and the McClay Professor in Medical Oncology at the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology, Queen’s University of Belfast. His research focus is on characterisation of a molecular group in solid cancers that represents an innate immune response to DNA damage through the STING pathway and development of a gene expression-based biomarker panel that can identify pathways related to the hallmarks of cancer and guide patient therapy.

He graduated in Medicine from Queen’s University Belfast in 1995. As a post-graduate, he trained as a Medical Oncologist and received a PhD in Molecular Biology in 2004 from Queen’s University Belfast. From 2004-2007, he worked as an instructor in Oncology at Harvard Medical School, USA, where he identified novel biomarkers and drug targets for cancer treatment. This work was published in several high impact journals and the associated patent was in-licensed by a Boston-based start-up company (DNAR) in 2007. In 2007, he was recruited to Almac Diagnostic Services as Global Vice President and Medical Director, with responsibility for diagnostic laboratories in the UK, USA, and more recently China. He is a CLIA, CLEP, and College of American Pathologists recognised laboratory Director and, in this role, has directed the design, validation, and delivery of over 40 clinical trial biomarkers on behalf of several pharmaceutical and biotech companies. He has also attended several FDA and EU regulatory meetings, representing Almac’s pharma partners.

In 2011, Prof. Kennedy joined Queen’s University Belfast and established a research group focussed on various aspects of stratified medicine. As part of this role, he treated oncology patients in clinical trials at the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre until 2018. He currently sits on the Cancer Research UK new agents committee, the MRC Stratified Medicine Panel and acts as a Scientific Advisor to Northern Ireland Government as a member of the MATRIX Committee. He published several research articles and received top grants and participated and organized conferences in Precision Oncology Medicine.