The UK government is pledging £82.6m ($102.2m) in research funding to back artificial intelligence (AI) companies developing technologies to accelerate drug development.
The government is investing £37.9m in three British research projects under the Research Ventures Catalyst (RVC) programme. This funding is complemented by an additional £44.7m in co-investment from various sources, bringing the total backing to £82.6m.
Two of the three projects involve artificial intelligence (AI) companies using technology to advance treatments and diagnostics for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. PharosAI – a Kings College London-spinout – will secure £43.6m of this funding. The company aims to create a platform for AI researchers and companies to access a broad spectrum of cancer-related datasets to train AI for healthcare settings. PharosAI secured £100,000 in seed funding in April 2024 as part of the RVC programme.
The second company to secure funding is the UK’s first not-for-profit focused research organisation (FRO), named Bind Research. The company – with the help of the £25.8m from the government –will develop innovative AI-based tools to characterise disordered drug-protein interactions, aiming to “drug currently undruggable proteins”. It will also train these AI tools to predict protein-drug interactions, speeding up the drug discovery process.
Dr. Gabi Heller, Dr. Thomas Löhr, and Dr. Gogulan Karunanithy, scientific co-founders at Bind Research said that the RVC programme has allowed them to adopt a not-for-profit FRO strategy that, “until now, was largely uncharted territory in the UK”.
These funding announcements were made at the AI Action Summit, being held in Paris, France, on 10–11 February. Notably at the meeting, the UK, along with the US, declined to sign a declaration that supported an “inclusive”, “sustainable”, and “ethical” to using AI. The UK Prime Minister’s spokesperson said to The Guardian that the government would “only ever sign up to initiatives that are in UK national interests”. The US and UK governments have not expanded on the reasons behind not signing the declaration, which was approved by 60 other countries, including France, India and China.
Recently, the UK government has been intent on showcasing its plans for AI. The healthcare sector is already harnessing its potential, particularly for drug discovery. Yesterday (10 February), the Technology Secretary Peter Kyle launched the AI Playbook for the UK Government to provide departments and public sector organisations with accessible technical guidance on the safe and effective use of AI. The government also expanded the UK’s involvement in the European High-Performance Computing (EuroHPC) Joint Undertaking by committing £7.8m to fund UK researchers and businesses’ participation in EuroHPC research.
The number of AI-focused startup and scaleup health tech businesses in Europe is growing. GlobalData job analytics shows that hiring related to AI within the European pharmaceutical and healthcare sector has increased rapidly over the last five years and continues to do so even when hiring in other related areas has plateaued.
According to a survey by GlobalData, the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology, AI is considered the most disruptive technology among businesses, including in the healthcare industry. The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the UK-founded DeepMind team for their work on AlphaFold, an AI system that accurately predicts protein structures. However, data scarcity, biological complexity, and regulatory concerns still present significant hurdles despite the hype.
