The UK government is promising £82.6m ($102.2m) in research funding to assist artificial intelligence (AI) companies in developing technologies to expedite drug development.
Under the Research Ventures Catalyst (RVC) initiative, the government allocates £37.9 million to three British research initiatives. This funding is supplemented by an additional £44.7m in co-investment from various sources, bringing the total financing to £82.6m.
Two of the three initiatives involve artificial intelligence (AI) companies utilizing technology to improve the diagnostics and treatments for Alzheimer’s and cancer. PharosAI, a spinoff from Kings College London, will receive £43.6m of this funding.
The organization aims to establish a platform that enables AI researchers and corporations to access various cancer-related datasets to train AI for healthcare environments. In April 2024, PharosAI received £100,000 in initial funding as part of the RVC program.
UK’s AI Efforts in Healthcare Receive Global Attention at AI Action Summit
Bind Research, the United Kingdom’s inaugural not-for-profit research organization (FRO), is the second organization to secure funding.
The company will create innovative AI-based tools to characterize disordered drug-protein interactions with the assistance of the £25.8m government grant, with the objective of “drugging currently undruggable proteins.”
Additionally, it will train these AI tools to anticipate protein-drug interactions, thereby expediting the drug discovery process.
Dr Gabi Heller, Dr Thomas Löhr, and Dr Gogulan Karunanithy, scientific co-founders of Bind Research, stated that the RVC program had enabled them to implement a not-for-profit FRO strategy that was previously mainly unexplored in the United Kingdom.
These funding announcements were made during the AI Action Summit in Paris, France, on February 10–11. It is worth noting that the United States and the United Kingdom declined to sign a declaration that advocated for the ethical, sustainable, and inclusive use of AI at the meeting.
The spokesperson for the UK Prime Minister informed The Guardian that the government would “exclusively endorse initiatives that are in the national interest of the United Kingdom.”
The declaration, ratified by 60 other nations, including France, India, and China, has not been signed by the US and UK governments. The reasons for this have not been disclosed.
Recently, the United Kingdom government has been determined to demonstrate its AI initiatives. The healthcare sector is currently utilizing its potential, particularly in drug discovery.
The UK Government’s Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, launched the AI Playbook yesterday (10 February). The document is designed to offer departments and public sector organizations technical guidance on the safe and effective use of AI that is easily accessible.
The government also committed £7.8m to finance the participation of UK researchers and businesses in EuroHPC research, thereby expanding the UK’s involvement in the European High-Performance Computing (EuroHPC) Joint Undertaking.
The number of health tech startups and scaleups in Europe that are AI-focused is increasing. GlobalData job analytics indicates that the European pharmaceutical and healthcare sector has experienced a significant increase in AI-related hiring over the past five years and has continued to do so, even though hiring in other related areas has reached a plateau.
As per a survey conducted by GlobalData, the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology, AI is regarded as the most disruptive technology in the healthcare sector and among businesses.
The DeepMind team, established in the United Kingdom, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold, an AI system that precisely predicts protein structures. Nevertheless, regulatory concerns, biological complexity, and data scarcity continue to pose substantial obstacles despite the hoopla.
Salman Ahmad is known for his significant contributions to esteemed publications like the Times of India and the Express Tribune. Salman has carved a niche as a freelance journalist, combining thorough research with engaging reporting.
