$270,000,000 world-leading supercomputer using AI to develop new vaccines

A £225m supercomputer is using AI to develop new drugs and vaccines.

The Isambard-AI computer is set to become the UK’s most powerful machine of its kind when it goes fully operational this summer in Bristol.

Using advanced AI, this cutting-edge piece of tech could change the face of medicine.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced plans to 'unleash AI' across the UK to boost growth.

Simon McIntosh-Smith, a professor in high-performance computing at Bristol University, said the Isambard-AI means the UK 'genuinely can be competitive with the world.' The computer is already being used to develop vaccines for Alzheimer's and other dementias, as well as creating treatments for heart disease, emphysema and different types of cancers.

University of Bristol

One team of researchers is using the machine to improve the detection of melanoma (a type of skin cancer) across different skin tones.

"We've actually got a little bit of the system already up and running, we already have people using it to do things like look for new drugs and new vaccines to treat people," Professor McIntosh-Smith said.

"It can do a lot of the grunt work, a lot of the things that would just be beyond humans because they have so much thinking power and so much computing power."

So how exactly does Isambard-AI work?

AI technology can 'simulate the way that drugs actually work inside the body, at the molecular level right down to atoms and molecules,' McIntosh-Smith described. "Many drugs work by targeting certain proteins in the human body and deactivating them or changing the way they behave."

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In the past, scientists had to rely on a lot of 'educated guessing' to figure out how potential treatments might interact with proteins. Now, AI speeds up this process dramatically.

Isambard AI can access databases containing millions of potential drugs and test them virtually in their earliest stages.

"Where artificial intelligence comes into it, is rather than trying all possible combinations of things it actually tries a whole bunch of random possibilities, looks at which are most promising, and then hones in on those," McIntosh-Smith explained.

"Artificial intelligence helps to zoom in and cut down on hot spots quickly, and there's lots of variance in how people are using that."

Excited about the possibilities, Prof McKintosh-Smith concluded: "We could be saving millions of lives with some of the things that we're talking about here and I find that tremendously exciting - it's brilliant to be able to actually be doing it right here in Bristol."