UK Biobank Immune Atlas to Generate 100 Million Data Points Per Sample

London-based IMU Biosciences and UK Biobank plan to generate more than 100 million immune data points from each of tens of thousands of samples, in what the partners describe as the largest and most detailed human immune dataset assembled to date. The initial cohort covers 80,000 blood samples from UK Biobank participants, with an ambition to expand to the full 500,000-participant cohort. Neither figure comes with a stated completion timeline beyond a start this year.

The project has selected instrumentation from Waters Corporation and Ultima Genomics. Ultima's UG200 Sequencing Platform, launched in February 2026 and now shipping, will produce the readouts and support large-scale data generation.

Waters contributes its flow cytometry and multiomic instrumentation — the BD FACSDiscover Cell Analyzer and the BD Rhapsody single-cell multiomics platform — under a strategic partnership announced in June. The workflow pairs these platforms with IMU's HD Immunology platform, integrating high-dimensional immune-cell profiling, transcriptomic analysis and AI-based computational methods.

How was the platform validated?

Ultima's UG200 was validated during selection on its performance with the BD Rhapsody platform, according to the announcement. No performance metrics, throughput benchmarks or validation sample sizes were disclosed. R&D managers evaluating the UG200 for comparable population-scale programs will find no measured specifications in the source material to benchmark against.

"We are proud to be selected alongside the BD platforms from Waters to power foundational dataset generation and enable a new layer of single-cell immune-profiling data," said Gilad Almogy, PhD, CEO of Ultima Genomics. He framed the win as building on "our ongoing work with the 600,000-sample UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project," calling it evidence of "the platform's suitability for large-scale omics data generation from large, deeply characterized biobank cohorts."

For scale: 100 million data points per sample across 80,000 samples implies on the order of eight trillion measurements if per-sample depth holds across the full initial cohort — a figure the partners have not independently confirmed.

What does the project change for researchers?

The initiative adds a high-resolution immune data layer on top of UK Biobank's existing de-identified genomic, imaging, clinical and lifestyle data. Over time, the resulting data will return to UK Biobank and become available to approved researchers studying how immune variation relates to disease risk, progression, treatment response and long-term health outcomes.

"This new dataset will provide our global research community with a valuable insight into how the immune system changes with aging," said Naomi Allen, DPhil, chief scientist at UK Biobank. "Scientists will be able to study which specific immune cell changes contribute to the future risk of conditions like cancer, diabetes, and dementia, paving the way for earlier disease detection and more accurate diagnosis."

Allen added that participant blood samples "have already been turned into genetic, proteomic, and metabolomic data." She projected the immune map will "in turn fuel the detection of new drug targets and help clinicians to understand who might respond best to a particular treatment." That claim is a projection; the dataset itself does not yet exist.

What remains unstated?

The announcement omits several items that bear on lab and portfolio decisions. There is no disclosed budget, no per-sample sequencing cost, and no stated funding source for the collaboration. The expansion from 80,000 to 500,000 samples is framed as hope rather than a committed milestone. Reproducibility and resolution targets are described qualitatively, without numeric thresholds.

For vendors, the selection consolidates Ultima's position in population-scale sequencing following the February 2026 UG200 launch, and extends Waters' BD-instrument partnership into a flagship cohort program. For researchers, access depends on UK Biobank's existing approved-researcher route, with data returned over an unspecified timeline. The project begins this year; when its first datasets reach the research community is a question the announcement leaves open.