Oracle billionaire’s institute gives Oxford major grant for AI vaccine research

Money will fund pioneering UK trial that uses artificial intelligence to map the immune system

Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison’s institute of technology is funding a first-of-its-kind project to use artificial intelligence for research into vaccines that will protect against the world’s most dangerous pathogens, in one of the largest grants that Oxford university has ever received. The Ellison Institute of Technology is giving £118mn to fund the Oxford Vaccine Group’s five-year project led by Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, who ran the trials of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. The group, part of Oxford university’s paediatrics department, will use the funding for “human challenge” trials — where participants are deliberately infected under controlled conditions — to improve our understanding of how the immune system responds to bacteria that antibiotics sometimes fail to treat.

Pollard said the grant was a “unique investment in UK universities”, which need commercial enterprises such as biotechnology companies to back their science. “This is a great example of the recognition by the others, by the Institute, of the type of work that you can do in British universities that we need to encourage for the future of the sector,” he told the Financial Times. The funding will bolster the UK’s pioneering work in vaccine research to help tackle antimicrobial resistance that scientists forecast will cause 39mn deaths globally in the next 25 years. The Ellison Institute of Technology is due to fully open its £1bn-plus Oxford campus in 2027. The facility will directly employ thousands of scientists in 30,000 square metres of research laboratories and computing capacity enabled by Ellison’s technology company Oracle. It was first established in late 2023. It aims to work on “commercially sustainable solutions” to some of the world’s biggest challenges, including in health, clean energy and food security, and will eventually plan to spin off companies.

Daniela Ferreira, a professor who is jointly leading the project with Pollard, said the EIT grant was essential to being able to conduct the studies at an unprecedented scale, recruiting more people than ever to the trials. EIT’s experts in AI will work alongside the UK’s world-leading specialists in human challenge trials. “It’s almost like a 20-year programme in four or five [years] because we can massively accelerate the whole programme by [combining] the expertise together with EIT and Oxford,” she said. The project will tackle pathogens such as E. coli, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Staphylococcus aureus, which scientists have tried and failed for decades to make vaccines to protect against. Pollard said only about one in 20 vaccine research projects are successful, even though vaccine candidates often look promising in animal studies, because there are big differences between how the immune systems of mice and humans operate. The trials will collect large amounts of data on how human bodies respond as they are exposed to the pathogens, including blood samples and tissue from the lymph nodes, a key part of the immune system. By using AI to process this data, the scientists hope they will understand more about the best tactics participants’ immune systems employ when battling the bacteria.

Those insights will help with selecting the right part of the bacterium to mimic in a vaccine. Investors are shying away from vaccine research, after the US appointed Robert F Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic, to oversee health policy. Earlier this month, Kennedy cancelled a £500mn grant for research into vaccines using messengerRNA, a technology used in the bestselling Covid-19 shots. Pollard said there was “huge concern” that the “dialogue” in the US was threatening vaccines that protect millions of children’s lives. “One of the greatest tools ever is being undermined by poor science and misinformation,” he added.