Blog

PharosAI Secures £18.9M UK Government Funding for AI-Powered Cancer Care

kcl.ac.uk

Feb 13, 2025, 10:43

PharosAI Secures £18.9M UK Government Funding for AI-Powered Cancer Care

PharosAI shared a post on LinkedIn:

“We are excited to reveal that PharosAI has secured £18.9 million in funding from the UK Government today to realise the promise of AI-powered cancer care.

Change is overdue: 3.1 million people are investigated for suspected cancer in the UK every year, and 167,000 people die from the disease. The UK has some of the worst survival rates in the developed world, due to delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment.

PharosAI will create a powerful, secure AI-ready platform to create models for faster, more accurate hashtag#cancer diagnosis and the design of new drugs, building towards a future of personalised, precision medicine for tomorrow’s patients.

PharosAI will digitise and use molecular profiling on tissue samples donated by patients from two NHS research biobanks, the Breast Cancer Now Biobank and King’s Health Partners Cancer Biobank – overcoming the historical problem of lacking large, high-quality datasets in cancer research.

Professor Anita Grigoriadis, Professor of Molecular and Digital Pathology at King’s College London and CEO of PharosAI, said: ‘The UK has a real opportunity to be a major innovator in cancer AI. PharosAI will create a data refinery to produce the jet fuel for tomorrow’s AI cancer breakthroughs.’

PharosAI is led by a team of researchers and clinicians from King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and Barts Health NHS Trust.

The UK Government funding adds to £24.7 million raised from partners including charities Breast Cancer Now, Guy’s Cancer Charity and Barts Charity; industry partners GSK, Panakeia, Microsoft, Paige, Tempus AI, 10x Genomics, PamGene International B.V., Bruker, CogStack, Calibre Scientific, Leica Biosystems, Hamamatsu Photonics France, Synoptix, and DAWN, bringing the total funding to £43.6 million.

PharosAI is grateful for the valued support of NHS England, the Royal College of Pathologists (RCPath), The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, AstraZeneca, CRUK Research Horizons, Genomics England, National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC), Our Future Health UK, UK Biobank, Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kainos, and many others.

To learn more, please read our press release and a press release from our funder, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Watch this space for further news!”

Mieke Van Hemelrijck, Professor of Cancer Epidemiology at King’s College London, shared this post, adding:

“Our TOUR: Transforming cancer OUtcomes through Research team is so happy to be part of this amazing initiative. We look forward to supporting PharosAI with the work of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust Cancer Real World Evidence Programme!

A great way to celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science! Proud of our RWE team which has many talented and committed female scientists!”

Read further.

PharosAI Secures £18.9M UK Government Funding for AI-Powered Cancer Care