Hub71 and Unilabs partner to bring diagnostics to Abu Dhabi startups
Hub71, Abu Dhabi's government-backed technology ecosystem, has announced a partnership with Unilabs, the European diagnostics group, to help HealthTech and life sciences startups develop, validate and commercialise new health technologies in the UAE. Unilabs joins Hub71+ Life Sciences as an anchor market partner, giving member companies access to its laboratory and imaging infrastructure, clinical expertise and existing healthcare network across 14 countries.
The tie-up is already active. Two Hub71 startups are working with Unilabs under formal collaboration agreements: Takalam, a digital mental health platform, and GlycanAge, a biotechnology company whose core product is a biological-age diagnostic based on glycan analysis. Salah Bahri, Chief Strategy Officer of Unilabs Middle East, said the partnership gives the diagnostics group "a direct route to identify promising startups across diagnostics, digital health and life sciences, and explore how their technologies can be integrated into our laboratories, healthcare network and services."
What each collaboration involves
With Takalam, Unilabs is building a combined mental health and wellbeing offering that layers targeted diagnostic testing onto Takalam's digital platform. The stated aim is to generate health data that can inform personalised wellbeing plans and clinical interventions. Notably, this would represent the first time Unilabs has moved into mental health services, broadening its product scope beyond traditional laboratory and imaging work.
The GlycanAge collaboration is further along commercially. Following clinical evaluation and sign-off on the technology, Unilabs has already introduced GlycanAge's glycan-testing solution across its network, backed by a training and clinical education programme aimed at healthcare providers. The glycan-testing market sits at the intersection of preventative medicine and longevity science, a category that has drawn growing interest from both consumer health companies and mainstream diagnostic providers over the past two years.
Market and regulatory context
Hub71+ Life Sciences was launched in 2025 alongside the Department of Health Abu Dhabi, the Emirates Drug Establishment, and the HELM cluster, giving the ecosystem direct relationships with regional regulators and payers. That regulatory proximity is a meaningful structural advantage for startups trying to achieve clinical validation in the Gulf Cooperation Council, where market-access pathways have historically required local clinical evidence.
Unilabs operates at significant scale globally, with more than 13,000 specialists serving close to 100 million patients annually. For startups, attachment to that infrastructure reduces the cost and timeline of generating the clinical datasets that regulators and hospital procurement teams typically require before adoption. For Unilabs, the arrangement provides an inexpensive window onto emerging diagnostic modalities without having to build or acquire them outright.
The broader context is a sustained push by Abu Dhabi to attract life sciences companies and reposition the emirate as a regional hub for health innovation. A number of European diagnostics and medtech companies have established regional presences in the past three years, drawn by government incentives, a concentration of tertiary hospitals, and a patient population suited to preventative health programmes. Whether the Hub71 model, which emphasises startup-corporate co-development over direct foreign investment, produces durable commercial outcomes at scale remains to be demonstrated. Investor and partner interest in the Takalam and GlycanAge collaborations will serve as early indicators.