The government has announced funding to accelerate the development of cancer care and treat undruggable proteins.
The British government is putting £37.9 million in research funding to tackle cancer and accelerate drug discovery using AI.
The government is putting the money behind three British research projects from the Research Ventures Catalyst (RVC) programme. Together with a further £44.7 million in co-investment across the three projects, from other sources, this makes for £82.6 million backing.
The three projects being supported by the programme include PharosAI. Based at King’s College London, it hopes to revolutionise cancer care by accelerating the development of the next generation of AI models which will deliver new breakthroughs to diagnose and treat the disease.
“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,” said Anita Grigoriadis, professor of molecular and digital pathology at King’s College and chief executive of PharosAI.
The second project is Bind Research which uses AI to learn the rules of drugging currently undruggable proteins, which could cure diseases that were once thought to be untreatable.
Scientific co-founders Gabi Heller, Thomas Löhr and Gogulan Karunanithy said that they intend to “harness collective expertise to deliver AI-enhanced tools and datasets as public goods to advance our mission of making disordered proteins druggable for everyone”.
The third project is not healthcare-related. MEMetic will receive funding for its work in water management.
“This new funding is another step to unlock the enormous potential of AI for cancer research and drug discovery – ensuring more patients like me experience the highest quality care,” said health and social care secretary Wes Streeting, speaking earlier this week on the final day of the AI Action Summit in France.
