Aitiologic Secures €6.4 Million in Seed Financing for Preeclampsia Lead Program

Aitiologic, a precision medicine company, has secured €6.4 million in oversubscribed seed financing to advance its tissue-resolved liquid biopsy platform and its lead program aimed at identifying preeclampsia risk in the first trimester of pregnancy. The round, co-led by Heal Capital and Ananda Impact Ventures, will support the ongoing validation and development of Aitios®, the company’s multi-modal cell-free DNA (cfDNA) platform.

Dr. Gordon Sanghera CBE FRS, a renowned pioneer in molecular diagnostics and former CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, has joined Aitiologic’s advisory board and participated in the financing. Dr. Rebecca Ertl, an obstetrician-gynecologist and founder of a leading prenatal diagnostics center, has been appointed as Chief Medical Officer to further drive the clinical translation of the company’s preeclampsia lead program.

Aitios® combines genomic, epigenomic, and fragmentomic information from circulating cfDNA with AI-powered interpretation to infer tissue of origin and characterize tissue-specific biological changes from a routine blood draw at single-molecule resolution. The platform is initially being applied to preeclampsia, using the same first-trimester blood sample used for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) to add information about maternal and placental health without requiring an additional blood draw.

Dr. Andreas E. Posch, CEO and Founder of Aitiologic, stated, "We have moved from a technology hypothesis to published clinical data and now into an ongoing large-scale validation study of our Aitios® platform in more than 1,000 pregnancies. Preeclampsia is a compelling first application because the unmet need for early risk prediction is significant and the clinical care pathway already exists. Longer-term, our ambition is much broader: to transform a routine blood draw into a rich source of molecular information about maternal and fetal health, and ultimately to make tissue-specific biology accessible from blood across a much wider range of conditions."

The company’s lead program is part of a larger initiative to develop Aitios® as a broader tissue-resolved liquid biopsy platform with potential applications in earlier disease detection, patient stratification, therapeutic response assessment, and longitudinal disease monitoring. Aitios® builds on patented tissue-specific liquid biopsy technology co-invented by Dr. Posch at Siemens Healthineers and exclusively licensed to Aitiologic.

The financing will support the ongoing development activities for the Aitios® platform, including the large-scale preeclampsia validation study with the Fetal Medicine Foundation. This study is designed to confirm the findings from Aitiologic's feasibility study and collaboration with Professor Kypros Nicolaides and the Fetal Medicine Research Institute, which demonstrated that tissue-resolved liquid biopsy could stratify risk for both preterm and term preeclampsia from a first-trimester blood draw.

Christian Lautner, Founding Managing Partner of Heal Capital, commented, "Aitiologic is tackling a major unmet need in maternal health with a differentiated approach that fits naturally into an established prenatal workflow. The team has already translated sophisticated liquid biopsy science into published clinical data and is now moving into large-scale validation. That combination of scientific differentiation, clinical relevance, and strong execution is exactly what we look for, and we are excited to support Aitiologic through its next phase of development."

Dr. Bernd Klosterkemper, Partner at Ananda Impact Ventures, added, "We are excited about the opportunity to turn a routine blood draw into a much richer window on human biology. By combining circulating DNA with AI, Aitiologic can reveal where DNA originates and what is happening in the tissue it comes from. Women’s health is a perfect starting point, and preeclampsia is an ideal lead program, where earlier detection and prevention can make a meaningful difference for both mother and child. We believe the same platform has the potential to unlock many additional applications, and are excited to back Andreas and the team."

Aitiologic’s approach to preeclampsia is particularly significant given the condition’s impact on global maternal and perinatal health. Preeclampsia affects an estimated 3 to 8 percent of all pregnancies and is a major cause of maternal deaths and fetal deaths worldwide. Early identification of women at increased risk for preeclampsia could transform clinical management by guiding preventive treatment and risk-adapted surveillance.

The company is headquartered in Vienna and is supported by non-dilutive grant funding from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Austria Wirtschaftsservice (aws), and the Vienna Business Agency. Aitios® is currently under development and is not yet approved or available for clinical use.