Profile · Life Sciences
DaveMullarkey
Chief Executive Officer · ClearNote Health
He doesn't spell out the genome. He reads what the cell is doing right now - and asks it whether cancer is on the way.
Chief Executive Officer · ClearNote Health
He doesn't spell out the genome. He reads what the cell is doing right now - and asks it whether cancer is on the way.
Most cancer tests look for a tumor that already exists. Dave Mullarkey runs a company built on a stranger idea: read the chemical annotations layered on top of DNA and you can hear a cell changing its mind before it ever becomes a tumor. That biomarker has a name almost no one outside a lab uses - 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, or 5hmC - and it sits at the center of ClearNote Health, the San Diego company Mullarkey leads as CEO.
The genome spells out what a cell could do. The epigenome records what it is actually doing. ClearNote's platform pairs proprietary hydroxymethylation analysis with bioinformatics and machine learning to spot the abnormal signal that high-mortality cancers leave behind. The flagship product, the Avantect pancreatic cancer test, looks for that signal in a blood sample - non-invasive, no scalpel, no scope. Pancreatic cancer is the kind of disease that usually announces itself too late to treat. Mullarkey's bet is that a test can speak up first.
In May 2026 the company secured $52 million in Series D financing and added muscle to its leadership team, capital aimed squarely at scaling early cancer detection. It was the latest chapter in a pattern that defines Mullarkey's career: take an early-stage genomics company, give it commercial shape, and push it toward something durable.
His own arrival in genomics is the first surprise. Mullarkey's training is in economics, not molecular biology. He earned a BS in Applied Economics and Management at Cornell's Dyson School and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School. He came to DNA through operations, capital and commercial strategy - the unglamorous machinery that turns a clever assay into a product a clinician can actually order.
That outsider's vantage may be the point. The lab invents the chemistry. Someone has to decide which cancer to chase first, how to validate it, how to pay for it, and how to convince a skeptical clinical world that a chemical mark on DNA is worth trusting. That is the work Mullarkey signed up for.
Our brand reflects our aspiration to enable people to live longer with a clear understanding of their cancer biology - even if they are at risk for high-mortality cancers.— Dave Mullarkey, on the ClearNote Health rebrand, 2022
Before ClearNote there was Omniome. As president and CEO, Mullarkey took the DNA sequencing company from early technology development through the delivery of a beta prototype. In 2021 PacBio acquired it. The story has a familiar shape because he had written a version of it before.
That earlier version was Ariosa Diagnostics, where he served as president and chief operating officer. Ariosa worked in cell-free DNA for non-invasive prenatal testing - reading fragments of fetal DNA circulating in a mother's blood. Mullarkey drove its global revenue growth and market development, and in 2014 Roche bought the company. He stayed on, taking a site-head role inside Roche's Sequencing Solutions group, learning the inside of a pharmaceutical giant after years spent building the thing it wanted to acquire.
Run the tape back further and the resume reads like a tour of the industry's biggest names: Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Dow Pharmaceutical Sciences. He collected the corporate playbooks, then went and ran the small companies that those corporations tend to buy.
The ClearNote story started under a different name. In January 2022 he was appointed CEO of Bluestar Genomics. By December 2022 the company had rebranded as ClearNote Health and crossed from research into a commercial phase - a transition that is harder than it sounds, and where many promising diagnostics quietly stall.
Then came validation of a different kind. ClearNote's Avantect multi-cancer detection test was selected as one of just two noninvasive blood-based technologies for the National Cancer Institute's Vanguard study. The Avantect pancreatic cancer test earned approval from the New York State Department of Health, one of the toughest regulatory bars in the country, and picked up a CMS code along the way. Each is a small, unglamorous proof that the science is becoming a product.
There is a coast-spanning quirk to all of it: Mullarkey is based in the Bay Area while the company sits in San Diego, a foot in each of California's rival biotech capitals.
No biology degree. Mullarkey reached genomics through Cornell economics and a Kellogg MBA, treating early cancer detection as much a commercialization problem as a scientific one.
Ariosa to Roche. Omniome to PacBio. He keeps taking promising, fragile companies and steering them to the outcome - acquisition or commercial launch - that early-stage ventures so rarely reach.
ClearNote's wager is epigenomic: the 5hmC mark on DNA reports what a cell is doing, offering a chance to catch cancers like pancreatic while they are still treatable.
His degree is in economics. He arrived at the cutting edge of genomics through business and operations - not the bench.
ClearNote's tech reads a chemical modification sitting on top of DNA, rather than the genetic code itself. It studies the cell's behavior, not its blueprint.
Two of the companies he ran were absorbed by sequencing giants - Roche and PacBio - inside a single decade.
The Avantect test was one of only two noninvasive blood-based technologies picked for the National Cancer Institute's Vanguard study.