Three Months After Launching With Its g.nome Platform, Almaden Genomics Names CEO

Life sciences industry veteran David Gascoigne will lead the new startup, which was launched in October by Catalyze Dallas Holdings.

Almaden's g.nome cloud-native platform offers "an advanced visual drag-and-drop workflow builder" and curated library of toolkits that can speed bioinformatic pipeline building "from what previously has taken months to mere hours," the company says.

In October, Catalyze Dallas Holdings launched Almaden Genomics with a goal of accelerating genomic research and discovery through streamlined bioinformatics. Today, Alamaden named life sciences industry veteran David Gascoigne as the CEO to lead the new Dallas-based startup.

Gascoigne will leverage his three decades of leadership experience in scaling businesses to lead Almaden, which launched its g.nome cloud-native platform three months ago. The platform offers “an advanced visual drag-and-drop workflow builder” and curated library of toolkits which the company says can help users get to market faster and scale their business profitably.

Almaden says its platform can speed bioinformatic pipeline building “from what previously has taken months to mere hours.”

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

Almaden’s team developed its tech at IBM Research

Catalyze Dallas—which specializes in the commercialization of technology it acquires from Fortune 100 companies—brought on the original team of bioinformaticians, engineers, and industry professionals that developed the technology behind Almaden at IBM Research. It believes Gascoigne is the right leader to take the startup forward.

“David is a significant addition to the original Almaden team of bioinformaticians, engineers, and industry professionals that developed g.nome, our cloud-native platform designed to streamline genomic workflows,” Tricia D’Cruz, executive chairperson of Almaden Genomics and co-founder and managing director for Catalyze Dallas, said in a statement. “After spinning out Almaden as a standalone company late last year, we found an executive that possesses a deep understanding of health sciences, integrated data sets, and machine learning who also has a proven record of successfully building and scaling businesses.”

Gascoigne’s background includes healthcare analytics and ‘causal AI’

A serial entrepreneur, Gascoigne joins Almaden from Sutherland Global Services, where he served as head of healthcare analytics. Previously he was the COO of GNS Healthcare, a global leader for Causal AI and simulation across life sciences. At GNS, he helped facilitate the discovery of novel therapies and accelerate R&D in rare diseases. Gascoigne has also held roles as general manager of analytics services for IQVIA; EVP of analytics and innovation for Symphony Health; and was a partner in digital analytics with Accenture. He graduated from Sheffield University in the U.K. with an advanced degree in applied statistics.

‘Tens of millions’ invested in Almaden’s platform

At its launch, Almaden Genomics had already invested “tens of millions” into its cloud-native platform, Catalyze Dallas said at the time.

“The global genomics market is expected to reach nearly $129 billion by 2030, fueled by reduced costs in genetic sequencing and the demand for personalized medicine,” D’Cruz said in October. “We are ideally suited to leverage our agility in commercializing promising innovations to this dynamic market space, 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.”