cell-free-dna
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Diana Abdueva Is Teaching Blood to Keep Better Notes
The computational biologist behind Aqtual has spent two decades learning how to pull useful signals from noisy biology. Now she is building a company around a deceptively simple idea: the blood carries a running record of what the body is doing.
David Ge Builds the Quiet Machinery Behind Liquid Biopsy
Before a genomic test can read a signal, someone has to rescue it from the noise. David Ge has spent his career moving upstream - from interpreting DNA data to engineering the chemistry that decides what reaches the sequencer.
Shidong Jia
Shidong Jia, MD, PhD, is the founder and global CEO of Predicine, a Silicon Valley precision-oncology company building multi-omic liquid biopsy tests that read cancer from blood and urine. Trained as a physician-scientist at Harbin Medical University, Peking Union Medical College, Dana-Farber and Harvard, he ran oncology biomarker strategy at Genentech before leaving to start Predicine in 2015. His pitch is simple: precision diagnostics to enable precision medicine, built 'From Pharma, For Pharma.'
Apostle Inc
Apostle Inc is a Pleasanton, California biotechnology company that develops nucleic acid isolation and preservation technologies for liquid biopsy. Its flagship magnetic-nanoparticle kit, Apostle MiniMax, extracts circulating cell-free DNA and RNA from blood for applications in early cancer detection, non-invasive prenatal testing, infectious disease research, and even astronaut biospecimen collection in commercial spaceflight. Founded in 2018 out of the Stanford StartX accelerator, the company sells reagents, automation instruments, and CLIA/CAP lab services to researchers and diagnostics developers worldwide.
Aqtual, Inc.
Aqtual, Inc. is a Hayward, California precision medicine company that reads epigenetics, gene regulation and transcriptomics from a single blood draw. Its proprietary active-chromatin cell-free DNA (cfDNA) platform captures circulating chromatin to survey hundreds of thousands of regulatory sites, integrating DNA, epigenetic regulation and protein-DNA binding in one blood-based assay. The company is first commercializing a test that predicts which therapy will work for rheumatoid arthritis patients, with a broader pipeline spanning oncology, immunology, cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological disease. Aqtual has raised roughly $47M to date, including a $31M Series B in July 2025.
ARNA Genomics US Inc.
ARNA Genomics US Inc. is a San Francisco-based biotechnology company developing multiomics liquid-biopsy technology for early cancer detection. Its lead assay, ARNA Breast, analyzes cell-free DNA and plasma enzyme activity from a routine blood draw to flag early-stage breast cancer, with proof-of-concept studies reporting sensitivity above 90%. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Egor Melnikov, the company raised a $3.5M Series A in 2020 to fund clinical validation.
ClearNote Health
ClearNote Health is a San Diego molecular diagnostics company building non-invasive, blood-based tests that detect high-mortality cancers early, when treatment works best. Spun out of Stephen Quake's Stanford lab in 2016 (originally as Bluestar Genomics), it pairs a proprietary 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) epigenomic platform with cell-free DNA analysis and machine learning. Its flagship Avantect Pancreatic Cancer Test targets high-risk patients - including adults 50+ newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes - and the company is extending the approach to ovarian and multi-cancer detection.