The pharmaceuticals firm GSK has struck a five-year partnership with King’s College London to use artificial intelligence to develop personalised treatments for cancer by investigating the role played by genetics in the disease.

The tie-up, which involves 10 of the drug maker’s artificial intelligence experts working with 10 oncology specialists from King’s across their labs, will use computing to “play chess with cancer”, working out why only a fifth of patients respond well to immuno-oncology treatments.