University of Cambridge Announces Agreement with AstraZeneca, GSK

The University of Cambridge announced a five-year agreement with AstraZeneca and GSK to fund the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine (CCAIM). For the entire agreement, AstraZeneca and GSK will support five new PhD studentships per year. This program will enable the best and brightest young minds in machine learning and bioscience to partner with leaders in industry and academia, wherever they may be in the world.

CCAIM has been set up as a cutting-edge research group. Its faculty of 10 University of Cambridge researchers – in addition to world-class PhD students, currently being recruited – have united to develop AI and machine learning (ML) technologies aiming to transform clinical trials, personalized medicine and biomedical discovery.

The center’s Director is Professor Mihaela van der Schaar and the Co-Director is researcher-clinician Professor Andres Floto. The faculty also includes Dr. Sarah Teichmann FMedSci FRS, Head of Cellular Genetics at the Welcome Sanger Institute and founder and principal leader of the Human Cell  Atlas international consortium.

CCAIM brings together a diverse coalition of Cambridge scientists and clinicians, with expertise in machine learning, engineering, mathematics, medicine, computer science, genetics, computational biology, biostatistics, clinical research, healthcare policy and more.

These multi-disciplinary experts from the University of Cambridge will work in close collaboration with scientists and leaders from AstraZeneca and GSK to identify critical challenges facing drug discovery and development that have the potential to be solved through academic research.

The center’s research output and the implementation of its ML tools could be transformational not only for the pharmaceutical industry – including in clinical trials and drug discovery – but also for the clinical delivery of healthcare to patients. The CCAIM team already has deep research links with the NHS, and four of the center’s members are NHS doctors.

“Machine learning has the potential to truly revolutionize the delivery of healthcare, to the great benefit of patients, clinicians and the wider medical ecosystem. But to realize this potential requires true and deep cross-disciplinary understanding – a great challenge because we speak different languages. CCAIM is designed to break down the barriers between machine learning and medical science, to create a unique forum in which we can work together to truly understand the challenges, formalize the problems, and develop practical solutions that can be readily implemented in healthcare,” Professor Mihaela van der Schaar said.