Hub71 backs life sciences with new platform

Abu Dhabi has unveiled Hub71+ Life Sciences, a specialist platform designed to speed up the path from laboratory research to patient-ready products across biotechnology, medical technology and digital health, with the launch staged at Hub71’s Impact Event 2025 in the UAE capital. Founders are promised streamlined access to regulators, hospitals, investors and corporate partners to test, validate and scale products from the emirate.

New platform powers Abu Dhabi life sciences

The initiative offers a structured entry point into Abu Dhabi’s integrated health cluster, aiming to compress timelines for clinical validation, regulatory review and market access. Organisers say the platform will help startups design robust evidence packages, secure approvals and run proofs-of-concept with healthcare providers, addressing a common bottleneck for early-stage ventures.

Built in alignment with the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi and the Emirates Drug Establishment, and connected to the HELM cluster focused on health, endurance, longevity and medicine, the specialist ecosystem is intended to anchor a broader life sciences economy in the emirate. The launch also tracks growing regional health expenditure: forecasts cited around the event point to the Middle East and North Africa healthcare services market approaching $412 billion by 2032, underscoring the commercial backdrop for venture building.

Hub71’s chief executive Ahmad Ali Alwan framed the move as a natural extension of the platform’s mandate since its establishment in 2019, noting that the community has “supported hundreds of startups” and now brings that experience to a dedicated health-focused environment connecting researchers, founders and capital. The pitch to entrepreneurs emphasises regulatory clarity, collaborative pilot opportunities and access to clinical partners—factors that often determine whether a promising idea can cross the gap between research and adoption.

Organisers highlighted momentum from companies already building in Abu Dhabi, citing names working on oncology, fertility and AI-enabled care pathways. Case studies such as BioSapien, Ovasave and Biotwin were flagged to illustrate how founders can use the emirate as a launchpad for translational research, leveraging local datasets, clinical sites and public–private partnerships to iterate products and generate evidence for scale. The new platform is positioned to widen that pipeline by onboarding ventures at different stages and routing them to fit-for-purpose regulatory and trial tracks.

Operationally, Hub71+ Life Sciences will sit alongside the ecosystem’s other specialist verticals—digital assets, climate tech and AI—creating cross-sector spillovers in data infrastructure, compute access and talent mobility. Founders accepted into the broader Hub71 community gain a mix of subsidised setups, business development support and introductions to investors; officials said nearly 300 startups in the network have together raised approximately AED 9 billion and generated around AED 5 billion in revenue to date. The new life sciences arm is expected to channel that playbook into regulated healthcare, where evidence standards and procurement cycles differ from consumer or enterprise software.

A central promise is “direct access” to regulators and care providers. For founders, that can mean early scientific advice meetings to shape study design, clearer expectations on real-world evidence, and defined on-ramps to run pilots within Abu Dhabi’s hospitals. The platform’s backers argue that compressing those steps could lower development risk and improve the odds that products—ranging from diagnostic devices to digital therapeutics—advance to reimbursement discussions and export markets. Alongside the compliance track, the hub will facilitate funding pathways, including introductions to venture firms aligned with health innovation mandates, corporate venture arms, and translational grants that can de-risk pre-commercial work.

The timing reflects an effort to consolidate Abu Dhabi’s profile as a health innovation centre amid global competition for life sciences investment. International founders evaluating relocation or expansion often cite regulatory predictability, availability of clinical partners and the ability to assemble specialist teams as decisive. Event materials and statements around the launch indicated that the emirate seeks to differentiate on all three, leaning on its health authorities for regulatory engagement and on a network of public and private hospitals for study sites, while using the wider Hub71 community to attract engineering and data science talent.