There are startups. And then there are signal detectors in a sea of noise. Aqtual, Inc. isn’t out here guessing, they’re measuring gene regulation in real time, from a tube of blood, like it’s a dashboard for the human body. This isn’t another “liquid biopsy” copycat with a shiny coat and a tired pitch. This is a molecular intelligence platform engineered by scientists who saw the limits, and then built the infrastructure to break through them.
Props to Diana Abdueva, Ph.D. (CEO) and Richard P. Rava, Ph.D. (CTO), the co-founders who didn’t just build Aqtual, they built the foundation for a new era in precision diagnostics. Diana’s got a Ph.D. in Applied Math and Computational Biology and used to run bioinformatics at Guardant Health. Richard co-founded Verinata Health, helped shape Affymetrix, and sat in the VP chair at Illumina. This isn’t their first dance. They’ve been in the lab, they’ve been in the boardroom, and now they’re building from both.
Today, Aqtual announced a $31M Series B, led by Bold Capital and the Bold Longevity Growth Fund, with continued backing from Genoa Ventures, Manta Ray Ventures, Yu Galaxy, and a strategic diagnostics partner that knows how to spot a once-in-a-decade platform when it sees one. That brings total funding to $47M. Let’s not act surprised.
The platform? Active chromatin cfDNA. Aqtual enriches >200 base pair fragments, the ones that actually tell you what’s going on. Not just whether DNA is there, but how it’s behaving. Sequence, epigenetics, protein DNA binding, all profiled in one blood test. If your diagnostics solution isn’t touching histone marks like H3K4me3 or leveraging chromatin dynamics, then it’s not Aqtual, it’s archival.
The real kicker: 1,300 patients enrolled in the PRIMA-102 trial for rheumatoid arthritis. Aqtual isn’t talking about potential, they’re running the largest clinical validation of active chromatin cfDNA on U.S. soil. Proof-of-concept delivered. CMS submission next. Commercial launch in 2026. You want real-time readouts for chronic disease activity? This is the map.
Aqtual is targeting a $19B annual spend in U.S. RA care alone, with expansion planned across IBD, COPD, metabolic disorders, and oncology. And the Bay Area team isn’t just growing, they’re hunting top talent across scientific, regulatory, clinical, and commercial roles. Because if you’re going to diagnose in real time, you better build like it.
