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.