From Introduction to Clinical Trial: How Hub71 Connects Innovation to Abu Dhabi’s Health and Life Sciences Ecosystem

Hub71’s role is to open doors for startups, connecting them to the capital, expertise and institutions they need, and to turn that into value for Abu Dhabi’s economy. For BioSapien, it started with a single introduction.

BioSapien is developing a new approach to cancer treatment. Its flagship innovation, MediChip™, is a 3D-printed implant that delivers chemotherapy directly to tumour tissue, targeting treatment at the source to improve outcomes while reducing the harsh side effects of conventional chemotherapy. Advancing it required investment, clinical partners and regulatory approval. As a Hub71 startup, BioSapien found all three in Abu Dhabi.

Connecting innovation to capital

Through Hub71, BioSapien founder Dr. Khatija Ali took the stage at Abu Dhabi Finance Week, putting her company in front of investors and industry leaders. That visibility led to a pitch on Shark Tank Dubai, where all four investors on the panel offered to back the company. BioSapien chose Global Ventures as the lead investor in its AED 27.5 million (US $7.5 million) round.

Every investor in the room wanted in, and BioSapien had the opportunity to choose. It is a small illustration of a larger function: connecting Abu Dhabi’s capital to the companies building here. The moment itself was brief, a place on a stage and an introduction to the right people, but little of what followed would have happened without it, and it took off through Hub71.

Into Abu Dhabi’s health system

Investment was one part. The other was clinical. Introduced into Abu Dhabi’s health and life sciences ecosystem in 2023, BioSapien began working towards clinical trials. As a US company, it ran the process the way it would at home, presenting its full clinical and pre-clinical data to local and federal regulators for review.

What followed moved quickly. BioSapien secured the local and federal regulatory and ethics approvals required to proceed, including from the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH) for its Investigational New Drug (IND) submission; the Emirates Drug Establishment (EDE) for clinical trials; and the Institutional Review Board (IRB), as part of DoH. World-renowned clinical institutions approved the trial protocol, and with the trial drug cleared into the country, BioSapien is ready to run its Phase I clinical trial in Abu Dhabi by mid-2026.

By connecting BioSapien into Abu Dhabi’s health ecosystem in the first place, Hub71 helped set this journey in motion, and helped bring a novel cancer therapy, and the clinical and regulatory work around it, into Abu Dhabi. For government entities, it is a practical example of how to engage innovation: through a Hub71 company already connected to the capital and expertise it needs.

Regulators assessed the treatment, clinical partners provided the expertise, investors funded the work, and BioSapien advanced the science. Hub71 opened the doors that connected them.

“Hub71 opened doors for us that we could never have opened alone. For a founder who had just moved to a brand-new country, it centralised the whole ecosystem in one place: the introductions, the investors, the support. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have moved to the UAE without an infrastructure like Hub71.”

– Dr. Khatija Ali, Founder & CEO, BioSapien

Built to run again from Abu Dhabi

For Abu Dhabi, the most valuable part may be what comes next. Having taken one solution through the emirate’s full regulatory pathway, BioSapien now treats that pathway as a repeatable process, and plans to run its future Phase I trials from the UAE. Its team works from Hub71 and is growing. Each trial run here brings clinical-research activity, specialist jobs and investment with it, turning a single company’s milestone into recurring value for the emirate.

The value this creates for Abu Dhabi

A cancer therapy reaching clinical trial is a rare milestone, and where it happens matters. BioSapien reached it from Abu Dhabi, connected at each step to the investors, regulators and clinical partners it needed, with the first of those introductions made at Hub71. This is what Hub71 does: turn startups into value for Abu Dhabi.