Longevity biotech firm deepens UAE presence, linking AI drug discovery to national genomics and an emerging geroscience ecosystem.
Juvenescence has announced an expansion into Abu Dhabi, establishing operations in Masdar City as part of a broader collaboration with UAE partners that includes access to large-scale genomic and health data. The move builds on existing investment relationships in the region and positions the longevity-focused biotech within a healthcare system increasingly oriented towards prevention, precision and population-scale insight.
The company also confirmed the appointment of Eileen Jennings-Brown as Chief Technology Officer, bringing experience in AI-enabled drug discovery at scale as Juvenescence advances its JuvAI platform in parallel with its geographic expansion. Together, the announcements signal a strategy that pairs computational capability with national infrastructure – an alignment that is becoming increasingly central to geroscience translation.
At its core, the development is about infrastructure – data infrastructure, regulatory infrastructure and translational infrastructure – and how these intersect with an aging biology thesis. Juvenescence has long framed itself as targeting fundamental mechanisms of aging rather than single diseases; the UAE expansion suggests an attempt to pair that ambition with national-scale assets and a policy environment actively cultivating life sciences capacity. Central to that proposition is access – to data, to patients and to translational pathways.
Longevity.Technology: Juvenescence’s deeper embed in Abu Dhabi reads less like another “office opening” and more like a bet on the one currency that compounds faster than capital in longevity biotech: data – and not the polite, de-identified trickle most companies are forced to make do with, but population-scale genomics tied to a healthcare system that can actually translate signals into studies. If the Emirati Genome Project’s 800,000+ whole genomes are genuinely accessible in a way that is clinically meaningful, governable and ethically durable, that is an infrastructure advantage most Western startups can only daydream about – but it also raises the bar on responsibility, because “we have the dataset” is not the same thing as “we have the social license”. The rhetoric of end-to-end AI drug discovery has become so ubiquitous that it risks fading into background noise; what will matter here is evidence – prospective performance, trial acceleration, better stratification, fewer dead-end programs, not simply sleeker pipelines. The UAE’s push to become a life sciences hub is now visibly entering its geroscience chapter – fascinating geopolitically and potentially transformative economically – yet the real win will be measured in the unglamorous details: governance frameworks, regulator-grade evidence and whether access to diverse patient populations becomes a clinical reality rather than a well-worn phrase in a deck.
AI moves from pilot to production
The company’s AI platform, JuvAI, sits at the center of this strategy. Eileen Jennings-Brown told Longevity.Technology that the sector has shifted from “experimentation to execution” – and the interesting part, she suggested, is the discipline that follows.
“That shift has been enabled by more mature, and greater access to, technology, allowing AI to be embedded into day-to-day scientific work rather than treated as a separate exercise – there is now far clearer understanding across the sector that AI delivers impact when it informs real R&D decisions,” she explained. “Juvenescence’s JuvAI platform is established and already supports targeted longevity research, and we have already seen the benefits that it has had on our pipeline. As we expand into the UAE, we’re focused on making sure our platform continues to support strong scientific decision-making as research activity grows.”
It is a pragmatic framing. No promises of algorithmic alchemy. Instead: integration, iteration, accountability.
From snapshots to trajectories
Longevity biology is rarely linear. Aging is cumulative, context-dependent and often maddeningly noisy – shaped by genetics, environment, lifestyle and stochastic drift. For AI systems trained on narrow, disease-specific datasets, that complexity can become a liability; the model learns the silhouette of an outcome without ever seeing the full moving picture.
Jennings-Brown argues that population-scale genomic and health datasets change the texture of the problem.
“Large-scale genomic and health datasets allow AI to look across populations and over time, rather than analysing biology in isolated snapshots,” she told us, explaining that this shifts AI away from modeling single outcomes and towards understanding trajectories and variations across individuals.
That broader frame matters because aging is not one pathway, one tissue, one tidy biomarker.
“Compared with traditional disease-specific datasets, this supports a more holistic view of aging biology, where multiple systems and pathways can be examined together. Population-scale and larger datasets (such as those emerging from the UAE) make it possible to consider how external conditions and environment shape biological signals. For AI, this enables stronger hypothesis generation around aging pathways and modifiers, rather than focusing narrowly on one disease or endpoint.”
The JuvAI platform is designed to work with this type of data, she explained, supporting exploratory and longitudinal analysis suited to longevity research rather than narrow, one-shot prediction – although the industry will still want to see what this looks like in practice: fewer dead ends, cleaner target validation, measurable acceleration where it counts.
An ecosystem taking shape
Masdar City has positioned itself as a hub for life sciences companies spanning discovery, data and clinical translation. Marwan Mohamed, Business Development Manager – Life Sciences, Masdar City, said Masdar City was pleased to welcome Juvenescence. “The company’s focus on AI-enabled drug discovery and targeting fundamental aging mechanisms aligns strongly with Masdar City’s role as a home for life sciences companies spanning discovery, data, and clinical translation,” he said. “This collaboration reflects Abu Dhabi’s ambition to build a globally competitive biotechnology ecosystem, supported by world-class infrastructure, access to national genomic assets, and close collaboration with healthcare and regulatory stakeholders.”
The language reflects a broader national strategy. The UAE has invested heavily in genomic initiatives and digital health infrastructure, aiming to integrate research, clinical care and regulation within a cohesive framework. For longevity biotech firms, that alignment offers potential advantages – streamlined study initiation, defined regulatory pathways, access to diverse cohorts – alongside the need to navigate governance and consent frameworks with care.
In practical terms, Juvenescence’s presence in Abu Dhabi may facilitate in-region collaborations and clinical studies, particularly in areas linked to immune function, repair mechanisms and cardio-metabolic resilience. The company’s stated focus on fundamental aging drivers situates it within a strand of biotech seeking to intervene earlier in the disease arc – at the level of pathways and processes rather than end-stage pathology.
That aspiration sits comfortably with a healthcare system increasingly oriented toward prevention. It also raises familiar questions about endpoints, reimbursement and regulatory categorization; aging itself is not yet an indication, and the path from geroscience insight to approved therapy remains circuitous.
Where data meets demography
Zooming out, the significance of this move is not confined to one company. Nations are beginning to compete not only for biotech capital but for healthspan capital – genomic repositories, AI capability, translational capacity and, crucially, the policy frameworks that allow these to cohere. As populations age and healthcare systems come under increasing strain, the incentive to shift from reactive medicine to intervention that is preventive and mechanism-based intervention grows sharper.
For longevity biotech, that convergence is both opportunity and test. Data abundance can accelerate discovery; it can also expose fragility in models built on narrow cohorts. Integrated ecosystems can shorten timelines; they can also amplify scrutiny.
Between algorithm and assay, clinic and code, the real work begins.
