$1 million research grant awarded to research group using AI to improve personalised ovarian cancer treatments
The Global Ovarian Cancer Research Consortium, a partnership of four ovarian cancer charities from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia, including Ovarian Cancer Action, has awarded a first-of-its-kind AI Accelerator Grant to an international team of researchers from the UK, Canada, Australia and the United States.
The team’s goal is to understand if artificial intelligence (AI) can improve how survival and treatment responses are predicted in ovarian cancer.
Using the $1 million global research award, plus an additional $1 million in computing support from Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, the team will analyse one of the largest and most comprehensive international collections of ovarian cancer data ever assembled.
They’ll integrate tumour samples, clinical records, immune response, genetic information, and lifestyle factors from thousands of patients across international research institutions.
Using fine-tuned AI models, the researchers will then analyse the data collectively to identify patterns in survival and treatment response that current tools cannot detect.
By improving how patients are matched to treatments and clinical trials, the project aims to reduce unnecessary side effects, support more personalised care, and ultimately help improve survival outcomes for women with ovarian cancer.
Cary Wakefield, CEO of Ovarian Cancer Action“Ovarian cancer survival rates can improve if the best minds work together at a global scale. Clinicians today have limited ability to predict how an individual patient’s cancer will behave, or which therapies will be effective.
By connecting global data from thousands of women, powered by Microsoft AI, we will pinpoint how each tumour responds to treatment, with the potential to dramatically change treatment for the 7,500 women diagnosed in the UK every year.”
The research team behind the project is a group of experts from four countries, representing epidemiology, molecular oncology, artificial intelligence, and clinical medicine:
- Professor James Brenton, Professor of Ovarian Cancer Medicine, Senior Group Leader and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
- Dr. (Celeste) Leigh Pearce, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan, United States
- Professor Susan Ramus, Professor in the School of Clinical Medicine and Lead, Molecular Oncology Group, University of New South Wales, Australia
- Dr. Ali Bashashati, Director of Artificial Intelligence Research, Ovarian Cancer Research Program (OVCARE), University of British Columbia, Canada
Professor James Brenton will lead the UK arm of the AI Accelerator research project.
James Brenton, Professor of Ovarian Cancer Medicine, Senior Group Leader and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.“Ovarian cancer is an incredibly complex disease. Ongoing DNA changes in the cancer mean it can become resistant to chemotherapy, and its unique pattern of spread and ability to prevent normal immune responses, can leave our immune system unable to fight the cancer. These barriers make it very difficult to treat effectively.
Our aim is to use advanced machine learning (AI) to make sense of this multi-scale complexity to develop new clinical tools that are urgently needed to more accurately predict survival and guide clinical decision-making."
The AI Accelerator Grant was first announced in 2025 as the inaugural initiative of the Global Ovarian Cancer Research Consortium, marking a new, collaborative approach to accelerating ovarian cancer research using artificial intelligence.
The international call for grant applications attracted 21 proposals from collaborative teams worldwide, underscoring the interest and potential in this line of research.
Throughout the process, our Patient Research Network helped inform decision-making, to ensure that lived experience, patient priorities and real-world impact remained at the heart of the funding decisions.
"I feel very proud to have contributed as a patient representative in this global, patient-informed initiative. It is reassuring to see scientists and patients working side by side to guide innovation. AI represents genuine hope – this initiative signals a future where that hope is shaped by both science and lived experience, for women worldwide.”
Formed in 2024, the Consortium unites four leading ovarian cancer research organisations from around the world – Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (United States), Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation (Australia), Ovarian Cancer Canada, and Ovarian Cancer Action (United Kingdom).
Together, the partners are combining resources, data, and determination to accelerate progress in a disease where survival rates have seen limited improvement for decades.
Want to learn more about the AI Accelerator research project?
Take a look at our FAQs page on what is the AI Accelerator grant, who it was awarded to, the impact of working globally and why it is important for women with ovarian cancer.
