Basecamp Research Kickstarts 2025 with a New CSO & a Cutting-Edge Supercomputer Cluster
Image Credit: Elizabeth Dalziel
In a Jan 6. press release, Basecamp Research (London, UK) has announced swathe of updates, including the appointment of cell and gene therapy expert Johnathan Finn as CSO, a new Kendall Square lab in Cambridge MA, US, and one of Europe’s largest private industrial supercomputers.
If’ you’re not familiar with Basecamp Research, it was recognized as one of Bloomberg’s “Top 25 UK Startups to Watch” in 2024. The company is renowned for possessing the largest biological database in the world, which it has been using to train foundational AI models and push the boundaries of AI’s biological understanding.
Yesterday, Basecamp Research, announced the recruitment of John Finn, as their new CSO, alongside the establishment of a new lab, and supercomputing cluster to accelerate its pursuit of programmable genetic medicines.
Finn most recently served as CSO of Tome Biosciences, where he pioneered new methods of large gene insertion for therapeutic applications. He also has held senior leadership positions at Codiak BioSciences and Intellia Therapeutics.
“John is a globally-recognized leader in cell and gene therapy who has spent more than 25 years pursuing extremely complex scientific and technological challenges,”
Glen Gowers, Co-Founder and CEO of Basecamp Research
Gowers continued: “With John’s experience, our huge data advantage and our pioneering new class of foundation models, Basecamp Research is positioned to go beyond known biology and achieve groundbreaking advances that improve human health.”
Finn has dedicated his career to advancing the field of gene and cell therapy through innovations in both gene delivery and editing technologies. He received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from The University of British Columbia and completed his post-doctoral research at McMaster University and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“I was drawn to Basecamp Research because of the incredible opportunity to develop the next generation of programmable genetic medicines and address challenges facing the field today,”
John Finn, CSO of Basecamp Research.
Finn continues: “Basecamp Research’s advantage of a vast and unique dataset, combined with its next generation of AI models, really complements my experience in genetic medicine. I’m excited to see how we can leverage these synergies to continue my life’s mission of advancing scientific discoveries that can lead to new treatments for patients in need.”
Expanded Team and Footprint in Boston’s Kendall Square
Finn will join a growing team at the company’s new lab and office in Kendall Square, a world-renowned biotechnology innovation district in Cambridge (MA, US). This team includes the company’s Chief Commercial Officer, Annupama Hoey.
Joining the Cambridge office alongside Finn is Konstantinos Andrikopoulos as SVP for Intellectual Property. Andrikopoulos brings 27 years of pharmaceutical intellectual property experience, having held senior positions at Biogen, Tome Biosciences and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Pairing Data with Compute to Enable Scaling of AI Foundation Models
These announcements follow a $60 million Series B funding round in October 2024, which has fuelled a rapid expansion of their proprietary foundational dataset. A Basecamp Research representative told FMAI the funding has allowed them to collect 10 times more data in the last three months than was collected in the previous three years.
Thus, to match it’s rapid data expansion, Basecamp Research has also unveiled a new supercomputing cluster, powered by NVIDIA H200 GPUs. The cluster will allow the company to accelerate its research into creating more advanced AI models. Longer context in particular will be essential for processing and analyzing the ever-expanding volume of high-quality genomic data being collected.
Looking beyond, the company continues to leverage it’s proprietary data and advanced models in a wide range of partnerships, including a multi-year collaboration with Dr. David R.Liu’s laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, as well as partnerships with three of the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies.