The new methodologies arising from the partnership will enable researchers to utilise previously inaccessible patterns and associations from vast amounts of complex, multi-layered health data. The approach will inform better design, decision-making and interpretation in clinical research, speeding up discoveries that improve outcomes for patients.
Professor Chris Holmes will co-lead the programme together with Dr Nicky Best from GSK.
Professor Chris Holmes, Professor of Biostatistics in Genomics at the Big Data Institute, said: ‘By supporting small teams of researchers and data scientists working closely with senior Oxford and GSK scientists, the collaboration will harness Oxford’s strengths in statistics, mathematics, engineering science and AI to address major challenges and bottlenecks in developing new medicines.’
The research will generate methodology and insights widely applicable to many different areas of health and medical science, using publicly available data sets to facilitate development of open source tools and resources.
Nicky Best, Vice President and Head of Statistics and Data Science Innovation at GSK, said:
‘This collaboration will help further our work at GSK to understand the patients most likely to benefit from treatment, and accelerate and improve outcomes of our clinical trials. By combining statistical rigour with the power of AI we have the potential to get the right medicines to the right patients faster than before.’
Oxford and GSK are evaluating initial areas of focus for the first projects that are anticipated to start in early 2025.
The new collaboration, and its approach of bringing together multidisciplinary teams of Oxford and GSK scientists, aligns closely with the Oxford-GSK Institute of Molecular and Computational Medicine (IMCM), first announced in 2021. The IMCM builds on insights from human genetics using advanced technologies such as functional genomics and machine learning to improve the success and speed of research and development of new medicines. The IMCM is initially focused on evaluating and integrating new approaches in genetics, proteomics and digital pathology to understand detailed patterns of disease which vary amongst individuals. The current focus of research is on neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease.
The work will be based on the Big Data Institute, an initiative jointly led by Oxford Population Health (Nuffield Department of Population Health) and the Nuffield Department of Medicine located on the University’s medical campus. The Institute brings together expertise in quantitative analysis and data science forming an analytical hub deeply connected to the wider experimental and clinical community in Oxford and beyond.