The government has unveiled £82.6m in new flexible forms of research funding to ‘unlock the power of AI’ in tackling cancer and other incurable diseases.
Coming on the final day of the AI Action Summit in Paris, it has also made a commitment to give UK researchers access to cutting-edge computing resources.
Two of the three projects benefiting from this support, which is helping to pioneer new ways of conducting research, will harness the power of AI to develop treatments and diagnostics for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
The government is putting £37.9m backing behind three innovative British research projects, the Research Ventures Catalyst (RVC) programme. Together with a further £44.7m in co-investment across the three projects, from other sources, this makes for a total £82.6m backing.
The RVC programme is delivering novel ways of funding groundbreaking research, such as endowments, which it says are flexible and reflect the real needs of cutting-edge innovators.
The RVC programme will support pioneering work training AI on the NHS’s vast pool of cancer data and drug discovery research.
Meanwhile the government is also expanding UK involvement in the European High-Performance Computing (EuroHPC) Joint Undertaking by committing £7.8m to fund UK researchers and businesses’ participation in EuroHPC research.
This will mean British AI and high-performance computing researchers can work unobstructed with their peers across Europe. International collaboration and broad access to computational resources will be key to unlocking the benefits AI promises to deliver across society and the economy.
Project 1: PharosAI
PharosAI, based at King’s College London, will receive £18.9m government funding plus £24.7m co-investment.
It will bring together decades of NHS and Biobank data and host it on a unified AI platform which it is hoped will revolutionise cancer care by accelerating the development of AI models which will deliver new breakthroughs for diagnosing and treating the disease.
Professor Anita Grigoriadis (pictured), Professor of Molecular and Digital Pathology at King’s College London is CEO of PharosAI.
“AI has the potential to revolutionise cancer care. The UK has a real opportunity to be a major innovator, leading to faster diagnosis, novel and more targeted cancer treatments, and better-informed healthcare for patients,” she said.
“PharosAI will democratise cancer AI and create an ecosystem to navigate the path to AI-powered precision medicine. Thanks to the RVC programme, we will build an unique operational approach between King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Barts Health Trust and industry partners. Our innovative collaboration will accelerate scientific breakthroughs and bring vastly improved cancer care to tomorrow’s patients.”
Project 2: Bind Research
The team at Bind Research will be the recipients of £12.9m government funding plus £12.9m co-investment.
They will use it to tap into AI to learn the rules of drugging currently undruggable proteins, offering hope to cure diseases that were once thought to be untreatable. It will do this by targeting disordered proteins associated with various diseases which could unlock scores of new avenues for treatment – potentially giving thousands of patients across the country a new lifeline.
Project 3: MEMetic
MEMetic will receive £6.1m government funding plus £7.1m co-investment for work to revolutionise water management by combining nature’s highly evolved solutions with state-of-the-art polymer chemistry.
This will support them to develop new solutions in a range of fields from lithium recovery in battery recycling, to facilitating clean water access – helping the world tackle the climate crisis.