Meet the LifeScience ORG CEO
Barnaby Balmforth - Biofidelity
What called you to lead?
I believed so strongly in what we were doing that I had no choice. I had to lead.
My background is actually in physics. I did my PhD in quantum computing and spent my days in clean rooms, fabricating semiconductor devices, and in dark optics labs, measuring them. I loved working on cutting-edge technology, but I became disillusioned with academia. No matter how much progress was made, practical impact always seemed a decade away.
So, after a brief stint as a software developer, I was introduced to a tiny startup in Cambridge – just two people at the time – working on a radical new idea for sequencing DNA. I had no background in genomics. In fact, I hadn’t even taken biology beyond GCSE level!
But the challenge was fascinating, and the idea that I could work on something with real-world impact was too important to ignore. And that decision changed everything.
I found myself completely immersed in genomics, fascinated by the way biology could be engineered like a toolkit – enzymes and DNA molecules assembled in new ways to solve problems.
Over time, I took on more responsibility, eventually leading a team developing an entirely novel method for sequencing DNA. It was complex, ambitious, and, looking back, probably a little naive. But we made it work.
Still, we faced a reality that many in biotech encounter: having a brilliant technology isn’t enough.
DNA sequencing is a billion-dollar game. Without the necessary investment, we couldn’t bring our platform to market. But in the process, we had developed a set of molecular biology tools that could be applied to a different, much more immediate problem – cancer diagnostics.
Through conversations with pharmaceutical companies, we learned how difficult it was to detect tumour DNA in a patient’s blood. The tests available were either too slow, too expensive, or not sensitive enough.
We had the expertise to build a better solution. This time, we started with the problem and built a technology specifically designed to solve it.
That was the birth of Biofidelity.
Barnaby’s full profile is available for our members inside the community.