Abu Dhabi bio-intelligence company CoreX is in the process of recruiting Emiratis to develop what it calls precision prescriptions, as it aims to narrow the drug efficacy gap among Middle Eastern communities in clinical trials, its chief executive for the Gulf has said.
The company – a "sovereign bio-intelligence engine" that is considered a new category of health care – combines living human cells and a proprietary artificial intelligence system called Ouris-AI to understand how human bodies react to medications and help to prevent adverse drug reactions (ADRs).
Currently, medicine and clinical guidelines are largely shaped by data from western populations, meaning drug safety and efficacy are limited on underrepresented populations such as those in the Middle East.
Analysis carried out by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2020 found that, of 292,537 participants in global trials, 76 per cent were white, 11 per cent were Asian and 7 per cent were black.
Genetic variants dictated by ethnic background can affect how drugs metabolise in the body, a 2025 study by the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Irbid said. This means a drug such as paracetamol, which is used by people around the world to treat headaches, might have a different effect on people from the Middle East than what is written on the medication's guidelines. There could be variations in how the drug is absorbed, distributed or excreted from the body.
This suggests that medication is only being tested and made for select populations, yet is being used globally.
Research published in the Nature journal found that genetic studies into Alzheimer’s disease and Type 2 diabetes have been dominated by participants of European ancestry. Between 2000 and 2009, Europeans accounted for 96 per cent of patients included in such studies, a figure that fell to 81 per cent by 2016, while Arabs and people of Middle Eastern descent made up 0.08 per cent.
The lack of broader representation risks limiting scientific understanding and may result in medicine being developed based on data that does not fully reflect how diseases affect other populations.
Precision prescriptions
CoreX is not a clinical service or treatment provider and is not meant to be a replacement for clinical trials or regulators, while it does not engage in commercial product launches either. Instead, it uses its AI technology to make recommendations on drug development. CoreX works closely with the Institute for Healthier Living Abu Dhabi and the emirate's Department of Health.
"Anyone who's willing to donate their blood, and a lot of people are, will go into what we call a population biobank and then we have basically representation from all different demographics," Sarah Miller, co-founder and president of CoreX, told The National.
"If we have 50 samples from one demographic. That's enough for us to start making very accurate assumptions on what will happen if we do [certain] drugs."
The initial Emirati cohort of 50 was quickly filled up last week and CoreX will not "say no to more samples, so we will keep going", Ms Miller said. "And the reality of this is that every new drug that we run through the system will add another 200 samples ... I'm more worried about capacity than anything else," she added.
ADRs are a well‑documented burden on health systems globally, with studies from major bodies such as the World Health Organisation reporting that 5 per cent to 10 per cent of hospital admissions in high and middle‑income countries are linked to ADRs. Between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of patients experience at least one ADR during hospital treatment.
Arabs are "absolutely" underrepresented in clinical trials, because of where major pharmaceutical companies are located and the demographics they recruit for clinical trials, Ms Miller said.
"Every country has their thing, but a lot of our pharmaceuticals, a lot of the early R&D for them came out of the US and Europe," she said. "It's a geographical thing. And it's just the fact that most clinical trials take place where these drugs and R&Ds are, and where there is budget to be able to do them ... that's where they recruit their trial populations – and they don't have a lot of Arabs in those places."
Medication‑related harm, meanwhile, is estimated to cost health systems about $42 billion a year, representing a significant share of preventable harm in medical care, the WHO said.
UAE impact
Applied to the context of the UAE, which has a population of about 10 million, even low single‑digit ADR rates translate into tens of thousands of avoidable adverse events every year, with direct hospital treatment estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to analyses from groups including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Ms Miller said CoreX's technology could be used to provide data accurate enough to rule out the need for early-stage clinical trials, which could shorten the drug release phase by half.
"At the moment, it takes around 10 years to take a drug from molecule to market, and nine out of 10 of those will fail and it will cost you up to $1 billion to run through that process," Ms Miller said. "If you start with what we're doing here at the beginning early, we can tell you with a 70 per cent likelihood, whether or not it's going to make it, you've already saved yourself the trauma of going through all of that process and finding out at a late stage that it's not going to work."
CoreX plans to expand its trials to the rest of the Arab world and eventually to other demographics, Ms Miller said, with some Gulf countries set to be included within two years.
"What we will end up with, in very short order, is not just Emirati samples, but from anybody and everybody ... and then we will have basically representation from all different demographics," she said.
