I am visiting Dubai and Abu Dhabi this week with Medicus Pharma Ltd., a biotech and life sciences company, and I believe I may have time traveled to the future.
Something significant is being built almost everywhere you look in the UAE. Dubai’s skyline, which didn’t exist a generation ago, is sprawling with towers of glass and steel, there are construction cranes building new skyscrapers, and the congested roads are bursting with tourists, regulars, and luxury cars.
Five years ago, we would have made a trip like this to biotech and finance cluster cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco, Singapore or London. These cities shaped modern biotech, and for good reason. They have the universities, the capital networks, the regulatory expertise, and the talent pipelines.
But standing in the UAE this week, watching this nation remake itself in real time, it is obvious that the old centers may have built biotechnology’s past, but they’re not the only places building its future.
The UAE is too.
Companies like Medicus have recognized this early and I believe will have structural advantages by doing business in the UAE that competitors can’t easily replicate.
The new melting pot
There’s a comparison to New York that keeps recurring in my conversations here. Dubai is becoming what New York was in the early 20th century, a place where the world is converging, where capital, ambition and talent are collaborating, where nationalities, industries and ideas are blending into something that didn’t exist before.
You will find at least 40 different countries represented here in a single facility. Indians working alongside Egyptians, Americans collaborating with Chinese and Pakistani scientists, European pharmaceutical executives negotiating with Saudi investors, all speaking English as a common tongue but bringing radically different perspectives and networks.
Diversity is not a moral aspiration or an HR initiative here; it is organic and a competitive advantage.
Companies are exploring precision medicine approaches here, accessing genetic data from populations that Western trials systematically underrepresent. When you discuss manufacturing, drug discovery and development partnerships, you are engaging with executives who understand both American and European regulatory standards and Asian cost structures. When you negotiate and explore capital terms, you are talking with investors who think in decades because their funds don’t face redemption pressures.
The melting pot isn’t just a metaphor here, it is the core infrastructure.
At one point in our world history, New York became the world’s financial capital not because it had the best banks. London’s banks were older and more established. New York won because it became the place where different types of capital, different business models, and different risk appetites could find each other with minimal friction. The stock exchange, the investment banks, the commodity traders, the insurance companies were all concentrated in lower Manhattan, all speaking different dialects of capitalism, all learning from each other.
The Review by Ajay Raju: Underperforming American school systems must become AI-powered innovation hubs (October 6, 2025)
The UAE is building something similar for 21st-century industries. Not just finance, though the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) now manages over $550 billion in assets, complemented by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the capital’s own financial hub. Not just real estate, though the construction is impossible to miss. But technology, life sciences, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, logistics, and manufacturing, all layered on top of each other, all cross-pollinating.
During this trip, we are meeting with sovereign wealth fund managers, AI researchers, and gene therapy experts. Each conversation is informing the others. Each meeting is revealing connections that wouldn’t be visible from Philadelphia where I normally hang my hat.
That’s the energy I felt stepping off the plane. The nation is buzzing with not just activity, but convergence.
Hub
The UAE’s emergence as an obvious hub of commerce and opportunity seems different from previous hub formations due to its unbelievable and unprecedented scale and speed.
New York took a century to build its financial district. Boston’s biotech cluster evolved over 50-plus years. Silicon Valley emerged across three generations of technology companies.
The UAE is compressing that timeline dramatically, and not just building one center, but multiple specialized cities simultaneously across its emirates.
Dubai Healthcare City is essentially a purpose-built biomedical metropolis, now expanding with a Phase 2 development that will increase its capacity even further. It houses 140 hospitals and clinics, 4,500 medical professionals, and over 500 life sciences companies. Their crown jewel is King’s College London, which anchors the medical education and research ecosystem. In a typical city, there would be a business park where industry is clustered. Here, in Dubai, they are building business parks that are themselves functioning cities with residential areas, schools, retail, and complete medical infrastructure, all designed from the ground up to support and scale innovation.
Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi has positioned Cleveland Clinic as its flagship healthcare institution, complemented by Pure Health, the emirate’s government-funded healthcare flagship. The UAE has invested heavily in healthcare provisions as a country, and is now a top destination for medical tourism. The healthcare system also features large alternative medicine practices, including traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic treatments, reflecting the diverse population it serves.
All research-based institutions are concentrated in Masdar City, a purpose-built mini-city in Abu Dhabi designed specifically for sustainability research and innovation. This is where the serious science is happening, where biotech companies like Medicus are accessing cutting-edge research facilities.
Biotech is relatively new here. There’s been no significant investment in drug development yet, though the desire is certainly present. Medicus is on the ground floor of what will be the next boom in the UAE.
Designer cities
The UAE’s federal structure gives cities like Dubai both autonomy and deep pockets. The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP) serves as the national health ministry for the emirates, while Dubai maintains its own regulatory authority, the Dubai Health Authority (DHA), giving it distinctive autonomy in healthcare governance.
Dubai Internet City hosts Microsoft, Oracle, Google, IBM, HP, and over 2,400 technology companies. The data centers here have computing capacity that would cost 10x more to access in California. The fiber optic infrastructure connects directly to subsea cables linking Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Dubai Science Park concentrates research-intensive industries like pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, environmental sciences, with laboratory facilities, collaboration spaces, and direct connections to universities and research institutions.
Dubai Media City. Dubai Maritime City. Dubai Logistics City. Dubai Industrial City.
I have seen similar metaphorical designations or marketing language in other cities, but not actual and distinct urban developments, each built for specific industries, each with dedicated infrastructure, each attracting global companies that previously would have located exclusively in Western hubs.
The total investment in these developments exceeds $80 billion. For context, that’s more than Philadelphia has invested in biotech infrastructure across its entire history. Actually, more than biotech, the Internet, Big Data, Quantum Computing, Robotics, Advanced Manufacturing, Fintech … combined, across Philadelphia’s entire history, but I digress (again).
These investments in the UAE are happening simultaneously, not sequentially. Most cities build one specialization, mature it, then potentially diversify. The UAE is building five or six New Yorks at once, each optimized for different 21st-century industries, each connected to the others, each designed to create network and scale effects.
Then there’s the logistics infrastructure. Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi and Jebel Ali Port in Dubai rank among the top 10 ports in the world, providing practical connectivity for pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution. This positions the UAE as an ideal bridge between East and West for life sciences companies.
Companies like Medicus can access healthcare infrastructure, AI computing power, manufacturing capabilities, logistics infrastructure, and capital funds within a radius of thirty minutes. This density of complementary capabilities is rare. That it was purpose-built rather than evolved organically over time seems unprecedented.
UAE
To appreciate what’s really happening here, I had to dig a little to learn about the UAE’s unique structure. It’s a loose federation of seven emirates that came together in 1971, each maintaining considerable autonomy while coordinating on strategic matters.
Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate by area, holds the presidency. Dubai holds the permanent prime ministership. A Federal Supreme Council of rulers makes strategic decisions, led by Abu Dhabi, which also provides financial support and covers shortfalls for all emirates. This structure allows for both coordinated national vision and individual emirate innovation.
Abu Dhabi is where the oil wealth concentrates, holding approximately 94% of the UAE’s oil reserves. It’s where the sovereign wealth funds are headquartered, and where serious long-term planning is happening. Dubai, by contrast, has minimal oil but serves as the global business hub, financial center, tourism destination, and logistics nexus.
The country is deliberately diversifying from an oil-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. Reading about COP 28, which the UAE hosted, provides fascinating insight into this transformation strategy. Dubai’s D33, an ambitious 10-year economic plan, and Abu Dhabi’s equivalent strategic vision document how each emirate is charting its course while contributing to national goals. The Urban Plan 2040 offers another window into the long-term thinking driving development across the UAE.
The strategic importance extends beyond economics. The UAE hosts a U.S. military base and supports many CENTCOM missions, positioning it as a critical partner in regional stability. This geopolitical positioning reinforces its attractiveness as a safe, stable location for long-term business investment.
Capital
Money talks. And Abu Dhabi’s money is really driving the UAE’s emergence as a biotech hub.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority manages approximately $1 trillion in assets, making it one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Mubadala Investment Company manages another $302 billion. The Investment Corporation of Dubai manages $320 billion. Combined, UAE sovereign wealth funds control over $1.7 trillion.
For comparison, that’s roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. venture capital industry’s total assets under management, but concentrated in a single region and managed with fundamentally different time horizons.
Traditional biotech venture capital firms, including 215 Capital which I run, operate on 7-10 year fund cycles. Partners raise a fund, deploy it over 3-4 years, then spend the remaining time trying to generate returns before returning capital to limited partners. There is immense pressure on portfolio companies to hit milestones that fit these timelines, to pursue development strategies that promise relatively quick exits, to make scientific decisions influenced by financial constraints rather than biological reality.
Our fund, 215 Capital, has incubated brilliant portfolio companies, including companies like Avstera Therapeutics that are deploying novel, first-in-class, breakthrough science. But, we are a teardrop in a rainstorm. We lack deep pockets and our partners have a narrow timeline. We often feel tremendous pressure to accept suboptimal partnerships because our capital structure demands speed. Our daily struggle is to go fast without compromising quality.
Sovereign wealth funds, on the other hand, don’t face these pressures. They’re investing national wealth across generations. A 15-year drug development timeline isn’t a problem; it’s just how long good science takes. They can hold through clinical setbacks that would force VC-backed companies to pivot or shut down. They can fund manufacturing infrastructure before revenue materializes because they can afford to be patient across decades, not quarters.
When 215 Capital invested in Medicus, we evaluated capital structure as carefully as we evaluated science. A company can have brilliant research and compelling data, but if we need liquidity in 2027 and the biology requires development through 2029, it is tempting to sacrifice great science for mediocre outcomes.
The conversations in the UAE involve capital sources that align with scientific timelines rather than forcing science to compress into financial models. What a luxury for companies pursuing genuinely novel mechanisms, the kind that could transform treatment paradigms but require patience and iteration.
The data infrastructure
The UAE’s biotech appeal is not limited to capital. It is investing heavily in digital and data infrastructure that most Western hubs are only beginning to contemplate.
The Dubai Genome Program sequenced almost one million UAE citizens’ genomes by mid-2024. One million. That’s a population-scale genetic database that provides insights Western institutions spent decades and billions assembling, and it covers populations that remain underrepresented in most global databases.
For biotech companies, this matters. You can develop therapies that work for everyone, while focusing on therapies that work for specific genetic profiles. Identifying those profiles requires access to diverse genetic data. The more diverse the dataset, the more precisely companies can stratify patients, and increase likelihood of trial success.
In addition to genomics, the UAE’s healthcare system claims to have achieved 97% electronic medical record digitization with genuine interoperability. US systems still require manual data reconciliation. I am told, in the UAE, there’s actual system-to-system data exchange that enables real-time clinical decision support. That’s incredible if you consider the speed and scale of development.
The UAE invested $3.1 billion in AI development in 2024, with explicit prioritization of healthcare applications. Back home, similar research funding would be scattered across universities. Here, in the UAE, this is infrastructure investment in data centers, computing clusters, networking capacity, and the specialized hardware that AI drug discovery requires.
Regulatory landscape
The UAE’s biotech strategy is also anchored to its regulatory innovation. In September 2024, MOHAP announced an expedited regulatory pathway for breakthrough therapies that can run parallel to FDA and EMA reviews. Drugs that receive breakthrough designation can begin the UAE approval process simultaneously with U.S. and European submissions, potentially cutting 18-24 months from global development timelines.
For biotech companies pursuing novel mechanisms, this matters too. Imagine reaching patients in 2028 versus 2030. That’s two additional years of market exclusivity. That’s hundreds of millions in incremental revenue and, most importantly, thousands of patients who receive treatment years earlier.
The UAE approved 23 breakthrough therapies through expedited pathways in 2024. Not rubber stamps. Genuine regulatory authority conducting genuine scientific review, but without the bureaucratic delays that plague US and European systems.
The US is watching. FDA announced in October 2025 that it would explore “parallel review mechanisms” for breakthrough therapies, language that mirrors UAE policies announced two years earlier.
If this is regulatory competition, I believe it’s healthy. For decades, FDA and EMA set global standards and everyone else followed. That monopoly on regulatory innovation meant that improvements came slowly, if at all. Now, jurisdictions that can demonstrate rigorous science combined with faster timelines are forcing established regulators to maintain competitiveness.
The Review by Ajay Raju: Are you prepared to live a longer and healthier life? (September 29, 2025)
The beneficiaries aren’t only companies, though obviously we do benefit, the real beneficiaries are patients who gain access to effective therapies years earlier than legacy systems would have permitted.
The pulsating energy
I am writing this essay in my room at the Palace Downtown hotel in Dubai. It is almost midnight and I can hear loud Bollywood music blasting outside as though the DJ is playing inside my hotel room. This is what Ancient Rome, NY and other major hubs were probably like; pulsating with energy of a place building itself in real time.
The folks I have met so far came to the UAE to build something new. They didn’t come for stability or tradition. They came because the absence of legacy infrastructure means the absence of legacy constraints.
Our portfolio biotech companies are coming here because allocated capital spanning decades, rather than quarters, aligns better with their innovation goals. We want to be part of what’s being built here.
You can feel the energy everywhere in Dubai. In the conversations that assume global collaboration rather than treating it as exceptional. In the willingness to experiment with approaches that established hubs have rejected as too risky or unconventional.
I imagine New York in 1900 had this energy. Immigrants arriving daily, new buildings rising monthly, fortunes being made and lost, and an overwhelming sense that the old rules didn’t apply because this was fundamentally new.
The UAE in 2025 has that same quality. The skyline changes are visible month to month. Companies are announcing relocations weekly. Industries that didn’t exist here five years ago are now employing thousands.
Mobility
The geography of biotechnology innovation is shifting fundamentally. For most of biotech’s history, location barely mattered for investment decisions. Science was done where universities were. Funding came from where venture capital concentrated. Manufacturing happened where pharmaceutical companies had built plants decades earlier.
That’s changing. Science is increasingly happening where data infrastructure enables it. Funding is coming from wherever capital finds attractive risk-adjusted returns. Manufacturing is locating where regulatory efficiency, logistics capabilities, and cost structures align.
When these factors are unbundled from legacy geography, new centers will emerge, especially when those new centers invest systematically in exactly the infrastructure that modern biotechnology requires.
The UAE is not a replacement for Boston or San Francisco. It is not yet on the same scale as the Valley, but it will become a necessary component of any sophisticated company’s strategy moving forward.
I believe by 2028, most significant biotechs will have Middle Eastern partnerships, Asian manufacturing, European trials, and U.S. commercial operations. Geography will matter less; ecosystem design will matter more.
AI capabilities will concentrate where infrastructure exists and where regulatory frameworks enable rapid deployment. The UAE is building AI infrastructure at scale precisely when biotechs need it. These investments will build network effects and institutional relationships and become self-reinforcing.
In the near-term, expect capital to decouple from geography entirely. Sovereign wealth funds will lead rounds from Abu Dhabi. Family offices will participate from Geneva. Crossover funds will commit from Singapore. The traditional model, where funding rounds require physical presence in specific cities, is quickly becoming antiquated.
Specialized hubs will emerge around specific capabilities rather than attempting to replicate entire ecosystems. The UAE seems particularly well-positioned for precision medicine, AI-driven drug discovery, rare diseases, and cell/gene therapies, areas where capital intensity, data infrastructure, and regulatory agility matter more than academic legacy.
The monolithic “biotech hub” model will fragment, and that fragmentation, I believe, will create opportunities for companies like Medicus that are willing to operate globally rather than locally.
Last Word
As an investor, I am looking for both good companies and the structural advantages that good companies can exploit. Our companies are having one-stop-shop conversations in Dubai. Which clinical programs to run first, how to structure data access agreements, which manufacturing partnerships should be prioritized, how to coordinate regulatory filings across jurisdictions, and how to access growth capital without surrendering strategic control.
Medicus is already running Phase 2 clinical trials in the UAE, with Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD) as the lead principal investigator, for its innovative, non-invasive skin cancer treatment. The sites for these trials include Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Shakbout Medical City, Burjeel Medical City, Rashid Hospital, Clemenceau Medical Center, and American Hospital of Dubai.
The UAE seems to have it all, and will redraw the biotech map. The future is being built right now, on the desert.
Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to enjoy my dessert while Bollywood music, my jet lag and my racing mind fight for attention.