Making Precision Medicine Routine: Sherry Dadgar and PMCDx Are Bringing Advanced Genomic Diagnostics to Everyday Clinical Care

Sherry Dadgar, Ph.D., founder of PMCDx, is making precision medicine more accessible by bringing comprehensive genomic diagnostics into everyday clinical care while tackling the systemic barriers that have kept advanced testing out of reach for most patients.

Sherry Dadgar, Ph.D., FACMG, trained as a clinical geneticist, completed a fellowship at the National Human Genome Research Institute, and joined the faculty at George Washington University before founding her own company. The decision to start PMCDx in 2020 came from a frustration she had watched build for years inside academic medicine and clinical labs: precision medicine tools existed, but the economics and infrastructure around them meant most patients never benefited from them.

At the 2025 TEDCO Expo, Dadgar talked about what PMCDx is building, what draws her to the work, and why the Germantown Innovation Center has been a useful base for growing a diagnostics company inside Maryland’s biotech corridor.

The Problem PMCDx Is Solving

PMCDx is a CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited clinical laboratory focused on advanced genomic diagnostic testing. It offers a broad menu that spans pharmacogenomics, hereditary cancer genetics, rare and undiagnosed disease testing, nephrogenomics, and infectious disease diagnostics. The lab’s RenaDx™ and RenaXome™ platforms are specifically designed to give clinicians comprehensive genomic data on kidney disease patients, translating complex molecular findings into actionable clinical guidance.

The underlying critique driving PMCDx’s design is one Dadgar has articulated consistently since the company’s founding. Large commercial laboratories have tended to develop test panels around what is financially optimized for the lab rather than what is clinically optimal for the patient. PMCDx was built to invert that logic: start with the patient’s genomic profile and deliver results that physicians can actually act on.

The goal of PMCDx is to improve precision medicine and make data from their underlying genetic signature accessible to individuals when the information can be actionable. That accessibility piece is not abstract. One of the challenges Dadgar flagged at the Expo is insurance coverage: when patients lack coverage for genomic testing, access gaps widen quickly, and the promise of personalized medicine stays out of reach for the people who may need it most.

A Lab Built for Clinical Breadth

What sets PMCDx apart from many precision medicine startups is the range of what it tests for under one roof. Where most independent labs specialize narrowly, PMCDx combines genomics, pharmacogenetics, and infectious disease diagnostics, a breadth that reflects both Dadgar’s own multidisciplinary training and her view that meaningful precision medicine requires a holistic picture of the patient rather than a single data point.

Dadgar’s path through bioinformatics, molecular medicine, clinical genetics, and health policy advocacy at Harvard, GWU, the National Human Genome Research Institute, and NIH’s Clinical Genetics Fellowship Program has given PMCDx an unusual combination of scientific depth and regulatory literacy. She has served on ACLA subcommittees focused on CPT coding for pharmacogenetics and hereditary cancer genetics, and has been active in advocating for independent laboratories on issues of payer network access, engaging legislators and HHS officials directly on how coverage gaps harm both patients and lab sustainability.

That policy work is not separate from the company’s mission. Dadgar co-leads the Fair Healthcare Access Coalition, a national effort to address the exclusion of independent laboratories from payer networks, a structural barrier she views as one of the most significant obstacles to equitable precision medicine access in the country.

Growing in Maryland’s Biotech Corridor

PMCDx is headquartered at the Germantown Innovation Center (GIC) in Montgomery County, Maryland. The location is well-suited for what the company does. Maryland has been a leader in genomics and precision medicine for decades: the state was home to the first CLIA-approved next-generation sequencing test for rare disease, and institutions like NIH, NHGRI, and the University of Maryland anchor a research infrastructure that is difficult to replicate.

Dadgar described the Germantown Innovation Center as a place that offers not just physical infrastructure but community, connections, and the proximity to other founders navigating similar challenges in the biotech and health technology space. The network that comes with being embedded in an active incubator environment, she said, is something early-stage founders need to take seriously.

Looking ahead, PMCDx is focused on scaling access to its testing platforms, continuing to develop digital health tools that bring genomic intelligence into more routine clinical workflows, and expanding its advocacy work on the policy and reimbursement issues that most directly affect whether precision medicine reaches patients beyond major academic medical centers.

The goal Dadgar has articulated since the beginning has not changed: make these tools accessible, at population scale, in a way the healthcare system can actually absorb. The company she has built in Germantown is one step toward that.

Source: BioBuzz