The UK Cancer Vaccine
AI Scientist & Supercomputing Project
Artificial intelligence is reaching an inflection point in science.
The UK Cancer Vaccine AI Scientist and Supercomputing Programme is a national research initiative reimagining the scientific discovery process to make safer, more effective and more precise personalised cancer vaccines.
A National Programme built for impact
We have assembled world experts in artificial intelligence, cancer immunology, genomics, automated laboratories, and sovereign UK supercomputing to create a self-improving discovery system, one that learns from every experiment and accelerates progress for patients.
Why cancer vaccines, why now?
Recent advances have made personalised cancer vaccines a realistic therapeutic strategy.
Tumour-specific neoantigens can now be identified with increasing confidence. Early clinical studies show strong immune responses and encouraging signals of durable anti-cancer immunity.
The challenge is speed. Discovery remains slow, fragmented, and resource-intensive. Prediction, validation, and manufacture often operate in isolation, limiting learning and delaying patient benefit.
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This programme is pioneering a unique solution to these issues.
Co-ordinated national support
The programme is enabled through coordinated national support.
It is backed by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, delivered through UK Research and Innovation–supported access to sovereign AI supercomputing, and supported by Cancer Research UK.
This work aligns with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s AI for Science strategy, advancing the UK’s leadership in AI-enabled discovery and translational life sciences.
AI Super computing
This programme positions artificial intelligence as an active participant in discovery.
At its core is an immune-focused foundation model trained on over 120 million peptide–HLA examples from more than 12,000 tumours, developed using the UK’s AI supercomputer, DAWN.
The model integrates tumour genomics, RNA expression, immune context, and functional data to predict which vaccine targets are most likely to trigger effective human immune responses.
AI Scientists
The AI Scientist analyses tumour data, generates hypotheses, prioritises vaccine targets, and designs experiments.
These workflows are executed in automated laboratory pods using robotic immunology assays. Experimental results feed directly back into the system, continuously improving its predictions.
The result is a closed-loop discovery engine—faster, more reproducible, and designed to scale.
AI-enabled science
The programme serves as a real-world exemplar for AI-enabled scientific discovery.
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UK sovereign AI supercomputers train advanced biological models. AI-connected laboratory systems extend this intelligence into the physical world, supporting decentralised mRNA vaccine discovery and future manufacture closer to the point of care.
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The ambition is safer, more precise and more effective personalised cancer vaccines- for global impact.