Today's Edition
MAYS IBRAHIM (ABU DHABI)
A health tech startup backed by Hub71 is aiming to transform how breast cancer patients receive life-altering treatment, replacing weeks-long laboratory delays with same-day results powered by artificial intelligence and infrared spectroscopy.
The company, Digistain, is addressing a persistent bottleneck in precision oncology: the time it takes to determine whether a patient needs chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery.
Today, many biopsy samples are shipped overseas, often to the US, for genomic analysis, leading to delays of two to eight weeks before clinicians can decide on further treatment.
For patients and families, that waiting period can be one of the most stressful phases of care. For doctors, it can also mean a default reliance on chemotherapy when the risk is uncertain.
In an interview with Aletihad on the sidelines of Make it in the Emirates (MIITE) 2026, Sarah Bond, Operating Partner at Digistain, explained how the company’s technology can help change that workflow.
AI, Physics and a Different Approach to Cancer Biology
Founder and CEO Dr Hemmel Amrania, a physicist by training, approached the issue from a spectroscopy perspective.
Instead of relying on the traditional RNA transcription method, Digistain scans a thin slice of tumour tissue using a spectrometer to capture its molecular profile.
The scan generates more than 10,000 data points specific to the patient’s tumour biology.
The data is then processed by proprietary AI software to produce a single prognostic score indicating the risk of cancer recurrence, Bond explained.
The result, according to the company, is delivered within a day, compared with the two-to-eight-week turnaround typical of current international workflows.
The score is used to guide adjuvant chemotherapy decisions by identifying low-risk patients who may avoid treatment and high-risk cases that require more aggressive care.
“Accuracy is comparable to gold-standard wet-lab tests, and because it's a reagent-free technology, we're talking about half the cost of next-generation sequencing,” Bond said.
The company estimates that nearly half of patients tested may avoid chemotherapy under its risk stratification model.
“Chemotherapy can be lifesaving, but it is also highly toxic and often overused when risk is unclear,” Bond added.
“Improving access to accurate, fast risk profiling changes that equation.”
The platform, MHRA-cleared and CE-marked, has undergone a world-first successful pilot trial in kidney cancer, and is also exploring use in colon, oesophagal, lung, and pancreatic cancer.
Abu Dhabi as a Launchpad
Digistain was founded in the UK in 2022 as a spinout from Imperial College London, emerging from research into faster and more objective cancer diagnostics.
The concept was driven by clinicians working within the NHS who were frustrated by the long turnaround times in pathology services.
Dr Amrania, who previously worked in NHS-linked environments, and consultant pathologists, including Prof Nick Wright, helped develop the underlying biomarker model.
It also draws on more than 30 years of breast oncology expertise from Prof Charles Coombes.
Digistain’s entry into the Middle East and North Africa is being accelerated through Hub71, Abu Dhabi’s tech ecosystem backed by Mubadala Investment Company.
The startup sees the UAE as a strategic base for expansion across the region.
“There’s a strong preference in this region for keeping diagnostics in-country,” Bond said. “Supply chain disruptions and geopolitical uncertainty have made local testing more important than ever.”
She added that Abu Dhabi’s healthcare mandate and infrastructure make it an attractive entry point for scaling medical technologies.
