Aitiologic Raises €6.4 Million in Oversubscribed Seed Financing to Advance Tissue-Resolved Liquid Biopsy Platform and Preeclampsia Lead Program

• Financing co-led by Heal Capital and Ananda Impact Ventures will advance the Aitios® platform and ongoing validation of lead program to identify preeclampsia risk in a pregnancy’s first trimester
• Dr. Gordon Sanghera CBE FRS, co-founder and former CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, joins Aitiologic’s advisory board and participates in the round as an investor
• Dr. Rebecca Ertl, obstetrician-gynecologist and founder of a leading prenatal diagnostics center, appointed Chief Medical Officer
  
  

VIENNA, September 15, 2026 — Aitiologic, a precision medicine company developing tissue-resolved liquid biopsy solutions, today announced the close of a significantly oversubscribed €6.4 million (approximately $7.4 million) seed financing, co-led by Heal Capital and Ananda Impact Ventures. The financing will support ongoing large-scale validation and regulated product development of Aitios®, the company’s multi-modal cell-free DNA (cfDNA) platform, initially for first-trimester preeclampsia risk stratification. Dr. Gordon Sanghera CBE FRS, an established pioneer in molecular diagnostics, participated in the seed round as an investor and will join the company’s advisory board. To further advance the clinical translation of the preeclampsia lead program, Dr. Rebecca Ertl has been appointed Chief Medical Officer.

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 company’s lead program applies the platform to preeclampsia using the same first-trimester blood sample used for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), with the aim of adding information about maternal and placental health without requiring an additional blood draw. Early identification of women at increased risk for preeclampsia, a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality worldwide, could transform clinical management by guiding preventive treatment and risk-adapted surveillance. Beyond preeclampsia, Aitios® is being developed as a broader tissue-resolved liquid biopsy platform with potential applications in earlier disease detection, patient stratification, therapeutic response assessment and longitudinal disease monitoring.

Dr. Andreas E. Posch, CEO and Founder of Aitiologic said: “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. This financing and the addition of Rebecca as CMO and Gordon as an advisor position us to rapidly execute on our robust product development and clinical validation goals to transform physician treatment decisions.”

Aitios® builds on patented tissue-specific liquid biopsy technology co-invented by Dr. Posch at Siemens Healthineers and exclusively licensed to Aitiologic [1]. The company has since substantially advanced this foundation through proprietary multi-modal cfDNA workflows and AI-driven, tissue-specific interpretation models.

Seed Funding to Accelerate Advancement of Aitios® Platform

Heal Capital and Ananda Impact Ventures, two of Europe's leading health-focused venture investors, co-led the financing, with early backers PUSH VC and LANA Ventures continuing their support alongside serial biotech founders with company-building, IPO and exit experience. Proceeds from the financing will support the ongoing development activities for the Aitios® platform, including the large-scale preeclampsia validation study with the Fetal Medicine Foundation. The 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 [2].

Christian Lautner, Founding Managing Partner, Heal Capital stated: “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, 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.”

Addition of Dr. Gordon Sanghera as an Investor and Member of Advisory Board

As part of the seed financing, Dr. Sanghera, co-founder and former CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, has invested in the round and joins Aitiologic’s advisory board, bringing extensive experience in building, financing and scaling a disruptive multi-modal sequencing technology globally. Dr. Sanghera led Oxford Nanopore Technologies for 21 years, building the company from a spinout of Oxford University to a publicly traded commercial organization on the London Stock Exchange.

Dr. Gordon Sanghera CBE FRS commented: “Aitiologic is pursuing an extremely attractive opportunity in liquid biopsy: extracting richer, tissue-resolved biological information from circulating cell-free DNA. Andreas and the team have combined strong science with a clear path toward clinical translation, and the early clinical evidence is highly encouraging. I am pleased to invest and look forward to supporting them as they advance the platform and build Aitiologic into a leading precision medicine company.”

Appointment of Dr. Rebecca Ertl as Chief Medical Officer

As Aitiologic advances its product development initiatives and near-term priority in maternal-fetal health, the company also appointed Dr. Rebecca Ertl, an obstetrician-gynecologist and founder of a leading prenatal diagnostics center in Austria, as Chief Medical Officer. In this role, Dr. Ertl will drive the design and execution of Aitiologic's medical strategy for its Aitios® platform, beginning with a preeclampsia program and the eventual expansion within maternal health and other diseases.

Dr. Rebecca Ertl, CMO of Aitiologic shared: “The Aitios® platform offers significant opportunity to better personalize treatment decisions for patients, with immediate impact to address a major pregnancy complication through our preeclampsia program. At the same time, we are beginning to explore whether our single blood draw platform can provide earlier insight into other maternal health conditions that today require separate screening pathways, including gestational diabetes. I am proud to join a team focused on unlocking the broad clinical applications of the Aitios® platform to decode disease and transform patient care.”

About Preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a hypertensive disorder affecting an estimated 3 to 8 percent of all pregnancies and a major cause of maternal deaths and fetal deaths worldwide [3,4]. Early identification of women at increased risk for preeclampsia could transform clinical management by guiding preventive treatment and risk-adapted surveillance.

About Aitiologic

Aitiologic is a precision medicine company decoding health by developing tissue-resolved liquid biopsy solutions that enable actionable treatment decisions from a routine blood sample. Its proprietary Aitios® platform combines genomic, epigenomic and fragmentomic signals from circulating cell-free DNA with AI-based interpretation to identify its tissue of origin and characterize underlying biological changes.

The company’s lead program applies the platform to first-trimester preeclampsia risk assessment, addressing a leading cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality, with broader applications in precision medicine, patient stratification and disease monitoring.

Headquartered in Vienna, Aitiologic is supported by non-dilutive grant funding from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Austria Wirtschaftsservice (aws) and the Vienna Business Agency. The company also benefits from support from the European Union through the European Investment Fund (EIF) / InvestEU Fund.

Aitios® is currently under development and is not yet approved or available for clinical use.

Media contact
Aitiologic
Dr. Andreas E. Posch
Founder & CEO
info(at)aitiologic.com

Media requests
Trophic Communications
Gretchen Schweitzer / Adolfo Luna
+49 172 861 8540 / +49 151 626 743 95
aitiologic@trophic.eu

---
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/EP3366780B1/en
[2] Ertl et al. 2026. First-trimester multi-modal cell-free DNA analysis for prediction of preterm and term preeclampsia. AJOG Global Reports, Volume 6, Issue 3, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xagr.2026.100659
[3] World Health Organization. Pre-eclampsia fact sheet. World Health Organization. Published December 10, 2025. Accessed September 9, 2026. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/pre-eclampsia
[4] Cresswell JA, et al. Global and regional causes of maternal deaths 2009–20: a WHO systematic analysis. Lancet Glob Health. 2025;13(4):e626-e634. doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(24)00560-6

Attachment

• PDF Version