Personalis Establishes UK Subsidiary and Appoints Mark Dronsfield as Director of European Sales

The company also announced the appointment of Mark Dronsfield, Ph.D., as Director of European Sales.

“Given the expanding research and clinical demands for large scale exome and genome analysis, we felt it was important to augment our presence in the European markets,” said Personalis CEO John West.  “We wanted to be prepared to build infrastructure on both the commercial and operational sides, so we are best able to address the needs of researchers and clinicians.”

West continued, “We are especially pleased to open our UK subsidiary as two of our major investors, Abingworth Management LLP and Dr. Herman Hauser, FRS, are UK-based.” Both Abingworth and Dr. Hauser’s Amadeus venture fund were investors in Solexa, Ltd, inventor of the sequencing-by-synthesis technology at the core of Illumina’s sequencing systems today. Abingworth’s Dr. Jonathan MacQuitty currently serves as Personalis’ Chairman.

Initially, Personalis intends to build out its commercial team, but will also build services infrastructure in the UK as customers’ needs require.

Mark Dronsfield, Personalis’ newly appointed Director of European Sales, was most recently Head of Commercial Operations Europe for RainDance Technologies and has also held European commercial operations positions for Illumina, Affymetrix and Life Technologies.

“We believe that the combination of Personalis’ deep expertise in exome/genome sequencing and analysis, along with a direct presence in Europe, will open many new opportunities as the clinical demand for next generation sequencing rapidly grows,” said Dronsfield.  “I am really excited to be part of Personalis’ European expansion.”