In the presence of Theyab bin Mohamed bin Zayed, Department of Health - Abu Dhabi signs agreements to advance research in life sciences, personalised preventive health, and AI drug discovery. In the presence of His Highness Sheikh Theyab bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Court for Development and Fallen Heroes' Affairs, the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi (DoH) has signed agreements with Isomorphic Labs, WHOOP, and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and AstraZeneca. DoH and Isomorphic Labs announced the signing of an agreement to collaborate on AI-enabled drug discovery research and explore innovation frameworks for pre-clinical research. The agreement was signed at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit by Her Excellency Dr Noura Khamis Al Ghaithi, Undersecretary of the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi, and Max Jaderberg, President of Isomorphic Labs. Under the agreement, the collaboration aims to develop a pre-clinical research roadmap for selected AI-enabled discovery projects over a 24-month period, with research conducted within Abu Dhabi's Trusted Research Environment. Isomorphic Labs has built a world-leading drug design engine (IsoDDE) comprised of foundational AI models to provide the predictive fidelity required to navigate novel biological systems with unprecedented accuracy. His Excellency Mansoor Ibrahim Al Mansoori, said: "Artificial intelligence is changing not only how quickly we discover new medicines, but how precisely we can target disease. Realising that potential requires more than technology. It requires rich clinical and genomic data, a research environment that can translate insight into discovery, and regulation that advances at the pace of science. "Abu Dhabi has built that foundation. Through the Emirati Genome Programme and our connected health system, we are opening new possibilities for more precise, personalised treatments. Our collaboration with Isomorphic Labs brings together expertise in AI drug discovery and Abu Dhabi's unique strengths to accelerate the development of treatments that can benefit patients here and globally." Mr Jaderberg said: "At Isomorphic Labs, we are reimagining the entire drug discovery process from first principles with AI. The collaboration marks a critical step forward in advancing AI-driven drug discovery. We have a shared commitment to scientific innovation, with the ultimate aim of accelerating delivery of medicines to patients globally." The collaboration reflects DoH's role in enabling the responsible use of predictive and generative AI in health research. It forms part of Abu Dhabi's intelligent life sciences strategy which connects population-scale genomic and health data, research infrastructure, and regulatory pathways to accelerate the development of new medicines in the emirate. Together, the parties aim to help accelerate AI-driven discovery research, as well as broaden the evidence base for future medicines, as Middle Eastern populations have been historically underrepresented in the genomic data behind drug discovery. Meanwhile, DoH and WHOOP announced a strategic research collaboration to explore the role of continuous health insights and coaching in preventive health. The research supports Abu Dhabi's shift from reacting to illness towards personalised prevention at scale. The agreement was also signed at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit 2026 by His Excellency Mansoor Ibrahim Al Mansoori, and Will Ahmed, Founder and CEO of WHOOP. The collaboration will consist of a phased research programme on heart and metabolic health, exploring how wearable technology can help people better understand their bodies and take a more informed, proactive approach to their health. WHOOP continuously senses an individual's key health indicators such as sleep, recovery, strain, stress, and cardiovascular health, providing context beyond a single measurement. The first, foundational study of the24-month programme aims to assess how this continuous data, alongside coaching from WHOOP, can affect key health markers like weight, waist circumference, heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and sleep over a six-month period for adults with obesity and high blood pressure. The study's design and oversight will be supported by physicians in Abu Dhabi. Subsequent studies will explore how WHOOP can help reduce risk factors for heart and metabolic disease by supporting the behavioural changes required alongside treatment. The programme will generate novel, real-world evidence on the role wearable technology can play in preventive and cardiometabolic health. In line with Abu Dhabi's prevention-led health agenda, the collaboration brings the continuous health data of WHOOP into the emirate's intelligent health system to accelerate population health research and safely scale new models of care. His Excellency Mansoor Ibrahim Al Mansoori said: "Our bodies can signal changes long before we feel unwell. The earlier we recognise those signals, the more we can do to protect our health. Abu Dhabi has built an intelligent health system that uses AI to turn complex health data into meaningful, personalised insights. Our partnership with WHOOP will explore how data from wearables can be translated into practical, personalised guidance, helping people better understand their health and make lasting changes." Mr Ahmed said: "This is a landmark partnership for WHOOP and Abu Dhabi. We first began working in the UAE in 2016. Since then, hundreds of thousands of citizens and residents have come to trust WHOOP to support their health and performance goals. At WHOOP, we believe deeply in what continuous data insights and coaching can offer when applied to real health challenges. Abu Dhabi puts data at the heart of how it cares for people, and I'm incredibly proud to work alongside them to explore what's possible, and even more excited about what we can accomplish together." Research will follow data governance guidelines over data minimisation, transparent data processing and secure storage, in line with applicable regulations and international best practices. Meanwhile, DoH, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and AstraZeneca have announced a new collaboration positioning Abu Dhabi as a priority location in AstraZeneca's global clinical trial network. The collaboration leverages the emirate's intelligent health system, advanced research infrastructure and enabling regulatory environment. The collaboration will explore the feasibility of up to 30 clinical trials in Abu Dhabi by 2030 across AstraZeneca's biopharmaceutical portfolio with a focus on cardiovascular, renal and metabolic (CVRM) diseases, which are leading causes of mortality in UAE. The collaboration could deliver an estimated AED180 million (US$50 million) investment into life sciences research in Abu Dhabi by 2030. The collaboration builds on Abu Dhabi's long-term partnership with AstraZeneca in research, genomics, and digital health. It brings together DoH's role in enabling clinical research and developing Abu Dhabi's intelligent life sciences ecosystem, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi's clinical and research expertise, and AstraZeneca's global R&D capabilities. Drawing on Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi's research infrastructure, it aims to strengthen local research capacity and generate high-quality evidence relevant to the region's health needs. The first six trials are expected to begin at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi by the end of 2026. His Excellency Mansoor Ibrahim Al Mansoori, said: "Abu Dhabi has built an intelligent health system where population scale data, research infrastructure, and clinical excellence translate into better health outcomes. This collaboration brings global clinical trials into this system, supporting our ambition to create a globally recognised environment for clinical research, and strengthens the evidence base to help ensure that new medicines are developed for the diversity of the world's patients." Dr Georges-Pascal Haber, Chief Executive Officer of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, said: "By combining Cleveland Clinic clinical expertise, the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi's infrastructure, and AstraZeneca's global research capabilities, we can accelerate clinical research, expand access to innovative treatments, and generate evidence that improves patient outcomes. Together, we are strengthening Abu Dhabi's position as a leader in clinical research, with benefits for patients across the globe." Mikhail Kosiborod, Senior Vice President, Late CVRM BioPharmaceutical R&D, AstraZeneca, said: "Clinical trials play a vital role in generating high-quality evidence that advances healthcare, providing patients with early access to promising new therapies and ensuring our data is generated in diverse, representative populations. This collaboration with the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi and Cleveland Clinic will enable further investment in clinical research infrastructure, and deliver evidence that informs clinical practice, ultimately shaping the future of patient care across conditions that are the biggest public health threats, both locally and globally." The collaboration also aims to generate locally relevant evidence, drawing on Abu Dhabi's population-scale health and genomics data to help address the historical underrepresentation of regional populations in pharmaceutical research. The proposed studies will support the development of local investigators and research professionals, while creating opportunities for eligible patients to participate in international clinical research, subject to study approvals and enrolment criteria.

The $1.8 billion bet on ai-ready biological data. Biohub, U.S. agencies, Meta and Google are funding a shared data foundation for predictive biology - but this is not a $1.8 billion dataset purchase. Artificial intelligence may be advancing rapidly, but in biology, model performance remains constrained by something far more physical: the ability to produce high-quality experimental data at sufficient scale. A new $1.8 billion collaboration aims to address that constraint. On October 7, Biohub announced an expanded partnership involving the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta. The five-year initiative will generate and organize the biological data needed to train AI models capable of predicting how cells respond to diseases, treatments and other interventions. The size of the commitment makes this one of the most consequential investments yet in purpose-built scientific training data. But the transaction requires careful interpretation. What the $1.8 billion represents. The headline figure does not represent the purchase or licensing of a finished dataset. It combines several forms of support: * Approximately $500 million previously committed by Biohub * More than $500 million in new DOE investment over five years * $300 million from Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta * Datasets, repositories and knowledge resources created through more than $500 million of prior NIH investment The total therefore combines new funding, existing data resources, research infrastructure, computation and measurement technology. This distinction matters. The initiative does not establish a $1.8 billion market price for biological data. It establishes a much larger signal: advanced biological datasets can be so difficult to create that the necessary collection infrastructure must be funded alongside the data itself. The missing input for predictive biology. AI models learn from documented observations. Biology, however, contains vastly more possible combinations of cell types, conditions, treatments and environmental changes than researchers have measured. The initiative intends to expand cellular-response data across many more of those combinations. That work is expected to include technologies such as advanced microscopy, cryo-electron tomography and biological engineering systems capable of observing or perturbing cells at increasing scale and precision. The objective is not simply to accumulate more records. It is to produce measurements that allow models to learn how biological systems change in response to specific interventions. This is an important difference between passive data collection and deliberate data generation. The required evidence does not already exist in sufficient volume on the public internet. It must be created through physical experiments, specialized instruments and carefully controlled research processes. Standardization is part of the asset. The collaboration will also work toward shared standards, common identifiers and a unified access layer. Those elements are easy to treat as supporting infrastructure, but they directly affect the value of the resulting data. Information collected by separate laboratories can differ in terminology, experimental design, measurement methods, metadata and quality controls. Even individually valuable datasets may be difficult to combine if those differences are not resolved. Standardization makes observations more comparable. Common identifiers allow records to be connected. A unified access layer makes the information usable across institutions and model-development environments. In this case, interoperability is not something applied after the dataset has been created. It is part of creating the dataset. An open resource can still carry substantial value. Biohub says the resulting resource will be open to the research community. That does not eliminate its economic value. Open datasets can reduce duplicated collection costs, accelerate model development and create a common foundation on which commercial products are built. In markets where reliable data is exceptionally expensive to generate, shared infrastructure can also increase the value of complementary assets - including proprietary experiments, specialized models and exclusive downstream applications. Important details remain undisclosed, including: * The release schedule for newly generated datasets * Whether funding partners receive any period of priority access * The exact licenses governing commercial AI training * Rights to models and discoveries derived from the data * Requirements covering attribution, redistribution and downstream use * Whether all contributed resources will be available under equivalent terms Those conditions will determine how open the resource is in practice, not merely in principle. The market signal for data valuation. The most significant lesson is not that one biological dataset is worth $1.8 billion. It is that major technology companies, scientific institutions and the U.S. government are collectively committing resources at that scale because the necessary data cannot be obtained through conventional scraping, aggregation or licensing alone. The commitment places measurable value on several components of the data lifecycle: * Creating observations that do not yet exist * Developing instruments capable of producing those observations * Standardizing data from different sources * Preserving scientific context and provenance * Providing infrastructure through which the data can be accessed and used * Maintaining sufficient quality for predictive-model training The initiative therefore provides a useful benchmark for data markets. When the required evidence is scarce, technically difficult to produce and expensive to validate, data acquisition becomes an infrastructure investment rather than a simple procurement exercise. The DatFlash view. DatFlash would classify the Biohub initiative as a data-generation funding benchmark, not a dataset acquisition or subscription. Its $1.8 billion headline should not be entered as the purchase price of a data asset. The individual funding components should instead be separated by source, timing and purpose. The initiative nevertheless represents an important market-context record. It shows that the value of AI-ready data may include far more than the finished files delivered to a model developer. Collection systems, measurement technology, standards, identifiers, provenance and interoperability can all be necessary components of the underlying asset. The central market signal is clear: When the data required for the next generation of AI does not exist, its value is reflected in what buyers and sponsors are willing to invest to create it.

Isomorphic Labs is reportedly in early talks to raise at a valuation of $40B or up to $50B. The round has not closed.