A research team in the Nuffield Department of Medicine has been awarded access to one of UK’s most powerful AI supercomputing facilities to advance cancer vaccine research. This access allows the researchers to develop vaccines to treat cancer using artificial intelligence (AI) enabled supercomputers.
The team at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine will be allowed to use the device, known as Dawn, for 10,000 hours as part of a government scheme. They will be analysing tens of thousands of data sets from cancer patients to try to spot patterns. Dr Lennard Lee, who is leading this ambitious project stated: “It does feel like science fiction; however, it’s a reality – it’s 2025, this technology is here and we’re going to give it a go.”
Explaining how the supercomputer would be used, Dr Lee said: “The issue that we’re facing is that cancer’s just very complex. “What this means is that we can process huge data sets quickly so we can look at tens of thousands and spot hidden patterns. What this is giving us is something that’s really special and it’s around speed and scale.”
Researchers hope to make discoveries while also contributing to the Oxford Neoantigen Atlas – an open-access online platform supporting cancer vaccine research across the UK. “What we think we’ll be able to do is really pave the way to design vaccines that simply weren’t possible before” Dr Lee, who is an associate professor at Oxford’s Centre for Immuno-Oncology said.
The project, ‘A foundation model for cancer vaccine design’, has been selected for an award by the highly prestigious UK Government’s AI Research Resource (AIRR) initiative, led by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The project will receive 10,000 GPU hours on the Dawn Supercomputer, one of the fastest artificial intelligence supercomputers in the UK.
With this unchartered discovery, new developments can be made in the world of cancer care – making treatments safer, more precise and more effective through use of cutting-edge technologies. Cancer vaccine design faces one of the greatest bottlenecks in development: access to high-performance compute infrastructure. With one of the UK’s fastest AI supercomputers now available at disposal, discoveries that once took years could now take just weeks.
The project, delivered by the Nuffield Department of Medicine, will leverage publicly available tumor datasets to make discoveries across multiple cancer subtypes and contribute to the Oxford Neoantigen Atlas – an open-access platform supporting cancer vaccine research across the UK. This work forms part of a broader national effort to accelerate the UK’s scientific capabilities, transformed by access to AI supercomputing power, to usher in a new era of immunology and vaccine discovery.
The AIRR programme, led by DSIT and UKRI, is investing over 1 billion pound to scale national compute capacity by 20-fold by 2030 – enabling bold, data-driven research across public and private sectors. This award aligns Oxford’s scientists with the government’s ambition to make Britain a global leader in AI, science and healthcare innovation.
Helene Elliott is the senior reporter for News Raise. She covers Science news. She also has a keen interest in photojournalism. Helene holds a nomination for the prestigious Red Smith Award. She is married to author Dennis D’Agostino, a former publicist with the New York Mets.
