NaCTeM joins Horizon Europe project advancing Generative AI for biomedical research

2026-03-13

NaCTeM will contribute to AIRIS (Mechanism-Informed Generative AI for Causal and Dynamical Modelling in Multimodal Biomedical Research), a new Horizon Europe project funded under the GenAI4EU programme (Call: HORIZON-HLTH-2025-01-TOOL-03). The Manchester team, led by Principal Investigator Prof. Sophia Ananiadou, has secured €600,000 to support the development of advanced generative AI tools for biomedical discovery.

AIRIS aims to overcome key barriers that currently limit the use of generative AI in biomedical research. The project will develop an agentic AI platform capable of integrating multimodal biomedical data and building dynamic causal models that link molecular, cellular, and patient-level processes. These models will help researchers to better understand disease mechanisms, predict disease progression, and explore how different patient groups respond to treatment.

The platform will be tested through proof-of-concept studies in five major disease areas: pulmonary fibrosis, liver disease, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and inflammatory bowel disease.

AIRIS places strong emphasis on trustworthy AI, embedding robustness, explainability, bias mitigation, and continuous ethical and societal evaluation throughout the project. The system will also connect with European research infrastructures such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the European Health Data Space (EHDS).

By combining mechanistic modelling, multimodal data integration, and trustworthy generative AI, AIRIS aims to support a new generation of predictive and personalised biomedical research tools.