Scientists from our top-rated Physics Department are playing a key role in a new UK clinical study aimed at improving treatment for people with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a fast-growing form of the disease.
The project, known as AI-VISION, brings together cancer specialists, data scientists and physicists to harness cutting-edge technologies to learn more about why some patients respond well to treatment and others do not.
The study has secured a significant £1 million grant from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to fund work that could transform how treatment decisions are made for TNBC patients
Our involvement draws on expertise from our Institute for Computational Cosmology and Department of Physics, where researchers are used to analysing vast amounts of data and modelling complex systems, such as the Universe.
In AI-VISION, they are applying these statistical and computational skills in a new context to analyse biological and clinical data from cancer patients to help identify patterns linked to treatment outcomes.
Professor Richard Massey, leading Durham’s input, explains that methods originally developed to study deep space are now helping researchers make sense of genomic and clinical information.
This cross-disciplinary approach is central to the study’s goal of using artificial intelligence to link tumour molecular data with real-world clinical results.
The AI-VISION project will profile tissue samples from people previously treated for early TNBC to find reliable biomarkers (biological indicators that could signal how well a patient might respond to chemotherapy, with or without immunotherapy).
By bringing together data from different sources, the study hopes to go beyond today’s standard of care, which largely depends on doctors’ best judgement based on clinical observations.
If this is successful, the work could pave the way for smarter, more personalised cancer treatments and open new doors for similar collaborations in the future.
Our Department of Physics is ranked 88th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025 and third in the UK in the Complete University Guide 2026. Visit our Physics webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
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