--- title: King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences - TIME - Partner Content - No Country Can Import Its Own Genome description: No Country Can Import Its Own Genome canonical: https://time.com/branded-content/King-Saud-bin-Abdulaziz-University-for-Health-Sciences/no-country-can-import-its-own-genome/ article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-11-09T09:00:01.958Z article:modified_time: 2026-11-05T20:31:10.807Z article:section: Paid Partner Content og:title: King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences - TIME - Partner Content - No Country Can Import Its Own Genome og:description: No Country Can Import Its Own Genome og:url: https://time.com/branded-content/King-Saud-bin-Abdulaziz-University-for-Health-Sciences/no-country-can-import-its-own-genome/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt004dfe93eed2e7d0/6aec3b0262c3063c694b8979/image3_transparent_padding.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1681 og:image:height: 946 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences - TIME - Partner Content - No Country Can Import Its Own Genome twitter:description: No Country Can Import Its Own Genome twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt004dfe93eed2e7d0/6aec3b0262c3063c694b8979/image3_transparent_padding.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # No Country Can Import Its Own Genome > Sponsored content. 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Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### What is included in a TIME print and digital subscription? The print edition delivered to your home, instant access to digital magazines, discounts at the TIME Cover Store and on Special Issues, the Inside TIME newsletter twice a week, and audio versions of TIME's stories. It is from $29 for one year or $49 for two years at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### What is the difference between TIME's digital and print plans? Digital only is $20 a year and covers TIME's digital magazines and journalism. Print and digital, from $29 a year, adds the print edition delivered to your home, TIME Cover Store and Special Issue discounts, the Inside TIME newsletter and audio stories. #### Is TIME a reliable news source? TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923. Its journalism is reported and edited by a professional newsroom led by Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, with named correspondents on politics, climate, health, technology and culture. It reaches 1 million US print subscribers and 1.15 million globally, plus more than 1.1 million newsletter readers. #### How do I subscribe to TIME magazine? Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. Choose digital only at $20 a year, or print and digital from $29 a year or $49 for two years. TIME also publishes seven free email newsletters at time.com/newsletters, which do not require a subscription. #### Can I cancel a TIME subscription? Yes. TIME states that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. #### Does TIME have free newsletters? Yes. TIME publishes seven free email newsletters reaching more than 1.1 million readers, covering daily news, Washington politics, health, AI, climate and energy, culture, and the newsroom itself. They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=d5fe2485-89ba-4a5b-98ba-873c149bf1f4&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=d5fe2485-89ba-4a5b-98ba-873c149bf1f4&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1)  His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When doctors in Saudi Arabia sequenced the genomes of 1,070 healthy newborns from across the country's 13 regions, they found something that should concern anyone who has ever taken a genetic test. Several gene variants labeled as disease-causing in Western reference databases turned out to be harmless in Saudi babies, common local variations rather than warning signs. A test built on someone else's data would have flagged healthy children as at risk. The finding points to a problem that reaches far beyond one country. Medicine is moving toward treatments built on genes, cells, and data, and those treatments are only as good as the information behind them. A widely cited 2016 analysis in _Nature_ found that 81% of people in large genetic studies were of European descent. For much of the world, the map that genetic medicine relies on was drawn from someone else's population.  His Royal Highness Prince Abdullah bin Bandar, Minister of the National Guard, inaugurating RGMBS 2026 on behalf of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. #### **Why medicine has to be built locally** For H.E. Bandar Alknawy, M.D., FRCPC, FRCP (Edin), CEO of the Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs and president of the Riyadh Global Medical Biotechnology Summit (RGMBS), the case for homegrown biotechnology rests on three practical realities. Populations carry different genes. They carry different diseases. And the newest therapies, including a CRISPR gene therapy listed at $2.2 million per patient in the United States, are rarely available unless a country builds the capacity to deliver them itself. Saudi Arabia has chosen to build. Its National Biotechnology Strategy, launched in 2024 by His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, sets out to reduce dependence on imported medicines, expand the national genomic database, and make biotechnology a pillar of a diversified economy. #### **What building it yourself looks like** The newborn study is one piece of a broader effort to understand the Saudi population on its own terms. At RGMBS in September, Prof. Fowzan Alkuraya of Lifera Omics explained how the structure of Saudi families lets researchers pinpoint disease genes with far fewer patients than studies elsewhere need. The next step goes beyond DNA. Researchers at the King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC) have begun measuring thousands of proteins in each sample. "Sequencing the genome was only the beginning," Dr. Alknawy said in an interview. "Proteomics is the next wave, and it takes us much closer to understanding how disease actually develops." The same logic now extends to treatment. In August 2024, doctors at King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh treated a 13-year-old with thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder that had required transfusions every three weeks since birth, using a CRISPR-based gene therapy. It was the first time the therapy had been given outside a clinical trial, and the patient reportedly recovered completely. Since that program began, 25 patients have received their own gene-edited stem cells. #### **Starting at the frontier** A country building a biotech sector today, Dr. Alknawy argues, has an advantage older industries never had: it can start with current science. Rather than retrofitting factories and systems built for older medicines, it can design around the newest approaches from day one. Saudi Arabia is building directly around gene editing, cell therapy, genomics, and AI-assisted research, along with the smaller, more accessible diagnostic tools Dr. Alknawy sees as the next frontier. But starting at the frontier only works if the frontier comes to you. Expertise built over decades in Boston, Cambridge, Copenhagen, and Seoul does not transfer by itself. It moves through people, partnerships, and shared standards. That is the purpose of RGMBS, which Dr. Alknawy describes as built to be a global bioscience hub rather than an exhibition.  His Royal Highness Prince Abdullah bin Bandar bin Abdulaziz, Minister of National Guard, and Her Royal Highness Princess Dr. Maha bint Mishari bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, CEO of FII Institute, with government officials, industry leaders and partners at the Riyadh Global Medical Biotechnology Summit 2026. #### **Why no country can do it alone** At this year's RGMBS event, researchers from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and the University of Virginia shared the stage with Saudi scientists, regulators, and investors. Several collaborations presented there had already moved past the signing stage. A gene therapy program between KAIMRC and AstraZeneca has produced its first laboratory results. A Harvard-led collaboration with KAIMRC on brain inflammation has produced a second joint project on heatstroke. People matter most. Dr. Youn Hee Choi of the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade warned the RGMBS audience that a country must train its workforce before its factories open, not after. "Infrastructure means nothing without people," Dr. Alknawy says. "Without the next generation of scientists and bio workforce talent, all of this remains an academic discussion. With them, it becomes action." #### **Speed without shortcuts** Regulation travels across borders too. Joseph Caspar Scheeren, who has worked on international drug standards since the early 1990s, told RGMBS how regulators spent three decades aligning their rules so that evidence accepted in one country is trusted in others. A country building its regulator today can adopt that shared rulebook rather than reinvent it. The Saudi Food and Drug Authority has done exactly that, earning the World Health Organization's highest rating for medicines regulators and approving one gene therapy in four months. Where the rules are still being written, in AI and in gene and cell therapy, every country starts from the same line. Speed raises an obvious question. Dr. Alknawy is clear that Saudi Arabia will not become a destination for research that ethical rules prevent elsewhere. “Every study here goes through full independent ethics review, under the same international standards as the world’s leading regulators,” he says. “That is not negotiable.” New rules for sharing genetic data with industry are also being tested under close supervision through a program launched with the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA). #### **Healthy years, not just more of them** Dr. Alknawy is wary of measuring success by life expectancy alone. Added years matter only if they are healthy ones, he argues, and the real measures are earlier diagnosis, better prevention, disease prediction, and cures. By the next RGMBS in 2028, he wants to see early-phase clinical trials designed in Saudi Arabia and run internationally. He also wants clinical trials to include the people research has historically left out, including women, children, and diverse ethnic groups. His message to the rest of the field is an invitation. "Our door is open," he says. "Whether you are a startup or a global company, if you have a good idea, bring it here. We are not looking only for local breakthroughs. We are looking for global ones." No country can import its own genome. But every country can decide whether to read it. _H.E. Bandar Alknawy_ M.D., FRCPC, and FRCP (Edin), _is president of the Riyadh Global Medical Biotechnology Summit (RGMBS), CEO of the Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs, president of King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences_ _(KSAU-HS)_ _, and chairman of the executive board of the King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC)._ _His office can be contacted at: CEO1@mngha.med.sa._ _He was interviewed for this article by Dr. Dan Sheridan._ [](https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/riyadh-global-medical-biotechnology-summit1/home/) [LEARN MORE](https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/riyadh-global-medical-biotechnology-summit1/home/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/King-Saud-bin-Abdulaziz-University-for-Health-Sciences/no-country-can-import-its-own-genome/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/King-Saud-bin-Abdulaziz-University-for-Health-Sciences/no-country-can-import-its-own-genome/"},"headline":"No Country Can Import Its Own Genome","datePublished":"2026-11-09T09:00:01.958Z","dateModified":"2026-11-05T20:31:10.807Z","description":"No Country Can Import Its Own Genome","url":"https://time.com/branded-content/King-Saud-bin-Abdulaziz-University-for-Health-Sciences/no-country-can-import-its-own-genome/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[],"articleSection":"Paid Partner Content","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/King-Saud-bin-Abdulaziz-University-for-Health-Sciences/no-country-can-import-its-own-genome/","name":"No Country Can Import Its Own Genome"}}]}] ```