Hepta, a biotechnology company developing a transformer-based artificial intelligence platform to analyze the cell-free DNA epigenome, has emerged from stealth with $6.7 million in seed funding. The round was led by Felicis Ventures and Illumina Ventures, with participation from SeaX Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and AME Cloud Ventures.
The company has introduced a liquid-biopsy-native AI model capable of interpreting up to one billion DNA fragments per blood sample, and has demonstrated clinical data showing its platform can identify patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) with significant fibrosis at an AUC of 0.86, thereby reducing false positives when compared to standard blood tests.
The company was founded by former Illumina, Grail and Google leaders who helped scale next-generation sequencing and liquid biopsy in oncology. Hepta is applying that experience to chronic disease, where diagnostic tools have not kept pace with clinical need. MASH, a progressive form of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, affects more than 20 million Americans, but less than one percent of cases are diagnosed today. Diagnostic approaches such as liver biopsies and specialized imaging are not widely accessible, and current blood tests often result in high false-positive rates. With new MASH therapies entering the market and more in development, clinicians need a scalable diagnostic tool to identify patients who would benefit from treatment. Hepta’s platform aims to deliver a tissue-level biological profile from a simple blood draw, enabling routine clinical use.
Hepta’s model is designed to analyze patterns across the entire circulating cell-free DNA sample rather than focusing on mutation-based signals, which are more applicable to oncology. By leveraging the attention-based architecture core to large language models and scaling it to molecular data, the system captures subtle epigenetic changes associated with chronic disease. According to the company, this unlocks biological signals that would otherwise be undetectable when genomic data is examined in smaller segments.
The company’s MASH Atlas dataset, developed in collaboration with leading hepatology research centers including Duke University, shows concordance between methylation patterns in circulating cell-free DNA and liver tissue. This suggests the blood-based assay can reflect organ-level biology and provide insights that could be used not only for diagnosis but also to guide therapeutic decision-making and monitor disease progression.
Hepta plans to expand its datasets, advance regulatory pathways and initiate commercialization efforts. The company also expects to present new clinical findings at upcoming medical conferences and is engaging pharmaceutical partners interested in integrating diagnostic intelligence into treatment programs.
KEY QUOTES:
“Traditional liquid biopsy methods work for cancer by typically looking for rare but distinct mutations, chromosomal copy number variations, or rather unique epigenetic changes. Chronic diseases such as MASH create no such signals, but rather subtle methylation shifts across millions of genomic sites. The technical challenge is detecting complex diseases like MASH, where signals are far fainter than in cancer. We built a transformer that processes all billion molecular interactions simultaneously. That’s how we find patterns that are invisible to methods that analyze the genome in far smaller segments.”
Soheil Damangir, Ph.D., Co-founder and CTO
“Hepta is extending the power of liquid biopsy beyond oncology to reveal organ-level biology in chronic disease. Our team, which developed next generation sequencing technologies at Illumina and built and scaled the first generation of liquid biopsy platforms at Grail, has now demonstrated that a simple blood draw can replicate tissue-level biology. This establishes a foundation for non-invasive diagnostics that can guide precision therapies in chronic diseases, starting with MASH, a systemic metabolic disease and a global epidemic affecting tens of millions in the US alone, where access to care is tragically limited by invasive, outdated or highly specialized tools. Beyond detection, our platform holds potential as a single source for guiding therapy and monitoring response.”
Hamed Amini, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO
“The concordance between cfDNA and liver tissue signals is strong, mechanistically consistent and biologically grounded. If implemented at scale, this approach can expand access to accurate liver diagnostics and care beyond tertiary centers.”
Anna Mae Diehl, M.D., Florence McAlister Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Duke University
“This test provides a novel way to address a major unmet clinical need to have a liquid biopsy and identify who needs to be treated among patients with suspected MASH. The improved diagnostic accuracy above and beyond routinely available clinical tests, such as FIB-4, enables immediate clinical action. This is especially important with MASH drugs finally arriving, where an accurate blood test could increase patient access by multiple folds.”
Rohit Loomba, M.D., M.H.Sc., Chief Medical & Scientific Advisor, Hepta; Director of the MASLD Research Center at UC San Diego
“Hepta’s technical rigor and data quality stand out even among later-stage companies. The science is strong, the market opportunity is clear, and we are proud to be early investors.”
Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner, Felicis Ventures
