UK Biobank and IMU Plan Immune Profiling of 80,000 Participants

The scale of the planned immune dataset is the defining feature of a new UK Biobank collaboration. IMU Biosciences aims to generate more than 100 million immune data points for each of tens of thousands of samples. The initial cohort will cover 80,000 participant blood samples, with a possible expansion to the full 500,000-person UK Biobank cohort. That gap between the first phase and the potential end state matters: the project’s ambition is clear, but its eventual reach depends on how the initial work performs and whether the collaboration expands.

The project will combine high-dimensional immune-cell profiling, transcriptomic analysis and computational methods to add a new layer to the biobank’s existing de-identified genomic, imaging, clinical and lifestyle data. These sources can provide researchers with different views of participants’ health, but joining them does not automatically produce useful conclusions. The value will depend on whether the new measurements are consistent and whether researchers can connect immune variation with health outcomes across a deeply characterized population. This is more significant than it looks: immune data may help researchers ask questions that the existing records, on their own, can’t answer.

Three platforms for large-scale profiling

IMU will use its HD Immunology platform alongside Waters Corporation’s flow cytometry and multiomic instruments: the BD FACSDiscover Cell Analyzer and BD Rhapsody single-cell multiomics platform. Ultima Genomics’ UG200 Sequencing Platform will generate sequencing readouts for the study. The arrangement brings together systems intended to capture different aspects of immune biology, from cell-level measurements to sequencing data. The scientific case rests in part on whether those outputs can be joined into a coherent dataset, rather than remaining separate streams of information.

Ultima said its platform was validated for use with BD Rhapsody as part of the selection process. The UG200 launched in February 2026 and is now shipping. The Waters and IMU partnership was announced in June. Those details establish the project’s technical and commercial context, but the more demanding test will come in routine use: a platform’s suitability for a large study depends on reproducibility across samples and on workflows that can sustain the planned scale.

“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, CEO of Ultima Genomics. He pointed to the company’s ongoing work on the UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project, which covers 600,000 samples, as evidence of the platform’s fit for large-scale omics work with extensively characterized cohorts. That comparison offers a relevant precedent for working with UK Biobank material, though proteomics and immune-cell profiling are distinct tasks. The prior project can speak to experience at scale; it can’t, by itself, establish how well this new combination of instruments and methods will perform.

Research access and potential uses

The project is set to begin this year. Once generated, the data will be returned to UK Biobank and made available to approved researchers. They’ll be able to study how immune differences relate to disease risk, disease progression, treatment response and long-term health. Access through the biobank could allow different research teams to examine the same resource from different angles, although the usefulness of that access will depend on the quality and consistency of the data provided.

UK Biobank chief scientist Naomi Allen said the dataset could help researchers examine how the immune system changes with age and whether particular immune-cell changes are associated with future risk of cancer, diabetes or dementia. She also said the data could support work on new drug targets and help clinicians understand which patients may respond best to particular treatments. Those are potential research directions, not promised outcomes. Establishing an association between an immune measure and a disease would be an early step; translating that relationship into a reliable clinical tool would require further evidence.

The collaboration extends UK Biobank’s existing genetic, proteomic and metabolomic resources with detailed immune-cell measurements. That combination could make it easier to explore how inherited biology, molecular signals and immune features relate to health over time. But a dataset’s size can’t compensate for measurements that prove difficult to compare or interpret. If you’re working in this space, the practical question is whether the new layer adds information researchers can use alongside the biobank’s existing records (and this is the part most people overlook).

Here’s the thing: population-scale profiling is only a starting point. The numbers here are striking, but scale alone doesn’t establish scientific value. The next milestone is demonstrating that the profiling and sequencing workflows can deliver consistent data at the planned population scale. A successful initial cohort could support broader research access and, if the project expands, a much larger resource. For now, the promise is clear; the evidence will come from the quality of the data and the research questions it can answer.

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