Artificial Intelligence: Vaccine Technology

Lord Tarassenko Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

In the UK there is a programme called Our Future Health, designed to enrol 5 million participants. It is very clearly designed to be an accurate representation of the UK population as a whole, with all our ethnic diversity and across age ranges. That is an important data resource for the future. The Health Data Research Service will also be part of making sure that data are appropriately curated, ready and available for use. The regulators already have processes in place to make sure that women, women of childbearing age and others are included in clinical trials. That work will continue.

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

My Lords, given that this ground-breaking work was done in Cambridge by both a university group and its spin-out biotech company, can the Minister reassure the House about access to the intellectual property beyond the University of Cambridge?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Obviously, the intellectual property that is being laid down as part of this process will belong to the university, the funder to some extent, and the company. The exploitation of IP demands that there is clarity on IP ownership in order to get the inward investment that will be necessary to turn this from what is a very early-stage project into something that might become a product.