Bioinformatics start-up Almaden Genomics has launched with the release of g.nome, a cloud-native platform designed to streamline genomic workflows and accelerate discovery by eliminating the need for coding in most applications. The platform leverages an advanced visual drag-and-drop workflow builder and curated library of toolkits.
“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. But, the process is iterative by nature with the writing and maintenance of code significantly slowing time-to-market,” said Tricia D’Cruz, Executive Chairperson of Almaden Genomics.
“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,” she added.
Formerly part of IBM Research, Almaden Genomics became a new standalone company under Catalyze Dallas’ this week. More than a dozen Fortune 100 clients have partnered with Catalyze Dallas to evaluate, spin out and build scalable stand-alone businesses to commercialize their technologies.
“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. We are ideally suited to leverage our agility in commercializing promising innovations to this dynamic market space,” said D’Cruz, who is also Co-founder and Managing Director for Catalyze Dallas. “Almaden is another example of how our proven model helps innovators capitalize on their R&D investment.”
Many biotech firms and research institutes still perform the laborious work of building pipelines with solutions being hand-coded by a limited number of highly skilled bioinformaticians. By reducing the need for coding, g.nome allows the broader research team to actively participate in the pipeline building and executing processes. The platform comprises visual drag-and-drop functionality using built-in tools and other features, such as ready-to-use workflows and a curated toolkit library. It aims to solve traditional barriers linked to workflow language, process flow visibility, and quality control.
“The g.nome platform is a revolutionary approach to bioinformatics that we are launching after an extremely successful customer pilot phase,” said Mark Kunitomi, Chief Scientific Officer of Almaden. “It validated our value proposition in the commercial biotech market by showing that with g.nome, anyone who understands genomics can participate in pipeline development. The possibilities for the healthcare innovation it can power are as vast as they are life-changing.”
“The g.nome platform has been a game changer for us,” said Puya Yazdi MD, Chief Science Officer and Chief Medical Officer at consumer health company SelfDecode, whose platform includes DNA sequencing, lab tests, and environmental factors.
Yard adds that, “We have been able to acquire customers faster and scale our business more quickly by providing results to our customers in a fraction of the time it used to take. My team really likes the easy graphical interface and toolkits and we now produce reliable production pipelines in a matter of days not months. The g.nome platform is helping us move at the speed of our own innovation and that is priceless.”
