Interview with our CEO Carlos Martínez at Transfiere 2026 for Intereconomía

How are you, Carlos? Good morning. First of all, before we ask how the trade show went, tell us a little bit about yourself: what do you do at Dreamgenics, and what was the company’s founding mission?

Dreamgenics was founded in December 2011, but I took over as CEO in January 2020. Initially, we focused on NGS data analysis. When you conduct a genetic test—for example, to determine whether a person has a genetically based or hereditary disease—you need to draw blood from that person, extract the DNA, and sequence it, which basically involves reading the information contained in the DNA. Then, the data is analyzed using bioinformatics, and geneticists interpret the genetic variations based on the patient’s clinical presentation.

That intermediate stage of data analysis is what Dreamgenics originally did. It had research-level tools, as many spin-offs do, and Dreamgenics was founded in December 2011. When I joined in 2020, we set out to diversify our services, because of the entire process, Dreamgenics was only handling the second of the three parts.

I came on board to get the lab side of things up and running—which was the first step—and once the COVID situation eased, since the whole COVID crisis began in March, it wasn’t until 2022 that we hired geneticists and started offering the full range of services, which is what we’re doing right now. 

We have three business lines: the main one, which is genetic testing, where we receive samples at our laboratory and handle the entire process until our geneticists issue the report—usually to doctors or to individual patients—and the second line, which is the core of the company and where we truly excel, is bioinformatics analysis. And, on the other hand, the initial sequencing stage, which rounds out our three business lines.

Throughout this entire process and the company’s journey since 2011, as you were telling us, why is it important to be at an event like Transfiere, here in Málaga?

First, we identified the participants and research institutes that were of most interest to us, with the aim of building relationships with them and establishing agreements that would support researchers—not so much on an individual researcher-to-researcher basis, but rather at the institutional level.

For example, we have the Spanish National Research Council there, and we have several research institutes with which we’d like to collaborate more comprehensively, because often when our sales team visits these institutions, we find that there’s a lack of the services we offer—but on a broader scale across the institutes. We often hear that they have a sequencing or bioinformatics unit, and when we visit those units, either there is no one actually providing that service, or there is a backlog or a lack of technical expertise. So the idea behind participating here is to offer our services in a more comprehensive way to all these institutes.

And from your industry’s perspective, what are the main challenges you face here in our country, for example? Then we’ll look beyond our borders. AndIn 2026, what challenges do you face?

That question would take a long time to answer, but to summarize: from my perspective, after completing my residency in clinical laboratory science and working in a hospital, I believe the main problem with genetics is that, at the hospital level, there isn’t a full understanding of the importance of this data for properly treating a patient—which is what’s known as precision medicine. Often, you may have a patient with certain symptoms, but if you don’t run the appropriate tests, you won’t identify the root of the problem and will end up treating a disease without really knowing its cause. Ultimately, that’s like putting a Band-Aid on a wound without knowing the cause. 

The problems are basically related to acceptance; from a medical standpoint, doctors are very reluctant because genetic test results aren’t like a blood test showing a cholesterol level of 225—which is above 200, so it’s high, and I’ll prescribe atorvastatin, etc. In genetics, the results are often inconclusive. Let me give you a fact to help you understand: of the 22,000 genes we humans have, we currently know the relationship to disease for only one-third—6,000 to 7,000 genes—which means there are 15,000 genes for which, even with all the technology and knowledge we have today, we still don’t know this relationship. As a result, many doctors are reluctant to order genetic testing because they know the results may not be conclusive, and they ask themselves, “What do I tell the patient?” and “What do I do with this information?” I believe this is the greatest challenge we face in the genomics market.

And then there’s also the issue of funding, which is usually one of the weakest links and the area where the sector has the greatest need for research. I don’t know if you’ll have a chance here to discuss public-private partnerships as well—that’s what the sector is calling for most of all.

Yes, in terms of funding, I’ll tell you that, from our perspective, in most public-private partnership programs, the biggest problem—and I’m speaking from a personal standpoint—is that corporate funding comes in the form of loans rather than grants. So, when research groups come to us with a proposal, I always have to give the same response: that while it may seem interesting to me from a scientific standpoint, it isn’t viable from a business perspective, because I can’t invest in something that won’t yield a return. You have to understand that a company operates the way it does; we have the objectives we have. So it’s true—and we were just discussing this with Cristina Fanjul, the director of CEEI in Asturias—that, in my opinion, we need to recognize that if we want business involvement, we have to rethink how these programs are being designed.

Looking ahead to this year and the years to come, we were talking about challenges, but could you tell us a bit about the projects you have in mind—ones that we can understand to some extent? I realize that your industry is a bit complex for our audience, and making it accessible is more difficult than in other fields where the practical applications are easier to grasp. But what projects do you have planned for this year and the years ahead?

For our part, the goal for a company like ours is always to understand the client’s needs and, based on that, try to meet those needs in the best possible way. Right now, over the past year, we’ve made a significant investment to bring our sequencing service in-house, because different clients have different needs, and it would mean getting into—as you say—details that the audience might not understand, but, basically, it’s about trying to meet all those needs, which are technologically very complex and require a lot of specialized staff—and that’s exactly what we have, since 80% of the Dreamgenics team consists of highly educated professionals. And with that, we try to meet those needs, always keeping in mind that we have to do so in a balanced way, because, ultimately, you have to assess what the market’s needs are and which ones you can address in the short, medium, and long term.

And finally, when it comes to artificial intelligence in recent years—in terms of R&D&I and technology—we’ve been talking about it for a very long time in your field, specifically at Dreamgenics, as you carry out your work. Does it make your job easier? Have you noticed any changes as a result of the development of artificial intelligence in recent years?

Let me give you a very clear example: when geneticists need to find a specific genetic variant identified in a patient, until now they would conduct a literature search and spend hours and hours looking for that variant in databases, published articles, and so on. Now, of course, you still have to review everything—the AI tools themselves tell you to double-check the results they provide, and in the healthcare sector, that’s doubly important—but it’s true that it makes your work much easier. You can say, “Hey, this genetic variant has been identified in this gene—how is it linked, or what scientific evidence is associated with these diseases?” And within a few seconds, they perform a literature review, search databases, etc., which allows you to work more quickly and optimize your time. So I’d say this is a very valuable contribution of artificial intelligence to our sector.