Catalyze Dallas Holdings is making its first foray into the biotechnology space with the launch of its latest portfolio company.

The Dallas-based venture development firm—which specializes in the commercialization of technology it acquires from Fortune 100 companies—has launched Almaden Genomics, a company whose newly released platform aims to “democratize and accelerate bioinformatics by breaking down barriers in biotech R&D.” Almaden was formerly part of IBM Research before becoming a standalone company under Catalyze Dallas ownership.

“Personalized medicine that takes account of a patient’s genetic makeup for drug and therapeutic development is expected to grow dramatically, providing all of us with an opportunity for earlier care and better outcomes,” Tricia D’Cruz, co-founder and managing director at Catalyze Dallas and executive chairperson at Almaden, said in a statement. “But, the process is iterative by nature with the writing and maintenance of code significantly slowing time-to-market.”

The possibilities ‘are as vast as they are life-changing’

Through its genomic workflow platform g.nome, Almaden has developed a drag-and-drop workflow builder. It comes with a library of toolkits to help biotech and pharmaceutical researchers sequence large amounts of genomic data through a scalable, interoperable process. Initially, Almaden is looking to target academic and small- to mid-sized biotech clients.

“The g.nome platform is a revolutionary approach to bioinformatics that we are launching after an extremely successful customer pilot phase,” Mark Kunitomi, chief scientific officer at Almaden, said in a statement. “The possibilities for the healthcare innovation it can power are as vast as they are life-changing.”

Catalyze Dallas says it has brought on the original team of bioinformaticians, engineers, and industry professionals that developed the technology behind Almaden at IBM Research, and they will now operate as an independent company under the Catalyze Dallas umbrella. A spokesperson for Catalyze Dallas said it’s looking to further grow Almaden by scaling all departments of the team, which currently numbers less than 50.

Almaden builds out Catalyze Dallas’ portfolio

Due to the way Catalyze Dallas funds its operations and portfolio companies, GenomeWeb notes that the firm has already invested “millions of dollars” into Almaden, adding that Catalyze Dallas expects to provide the company with future growth funding rounds. D’Cruz told the publication that Catalyze Dallas sees Almaden hitting $100 million in revenue within the next five years.

“With g.nome, we solve a massive bioinformatics bottleneck, speeding research and development with the ability to create and execute a pipeline, which can take at times up to six months down to about an hour, enabling rapid iteration and discovery,” D’Cruz said.

Like Almaden, Catalyze Dallas’ other portfolio companies are aimed at commercializing tech developed elsewhere. In the case of its other two ventures, that tech comes from Lockheed Martin. Launched in 2016, Catalyze Dallas’ Metro Aerospace is taking 3D-printed aerodynamic components developed by Lockheed to market. Its other company, Alpine Advanced Materials, was formed in 2019 and manufactures custom engineered parts made from a structural thermoplastic nanocomposite material.

“Almaden is another example of how our proven model helps innovators capitalize on their R&D investment, which we do through a combination of entrepreneurial know-how and access to capital—speeding the time to market,” D’Cruz said.

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