Amplifyer Bio publishes liquid biopsy preclinical data showing up to a 100-fold increase in ctDNA recovery
Data shows priming agents improved sensitivity for disease detection and mutational profiling while preserving key cfDNA features.
Amplifyer Bio, a biotech company unleashing the power of liquid biopsies, today announced preclinical data showing that a humanized priming agent achieved up to a 100-fold increase in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) recovery.
Liquid biopsy tests offer a far less invasive and costly approach to detecting cancer, but currently the effectiveness of liquid biopsies is limited due to the human body quickly removing circulating tumor DNA from the bloodstream before it can be measured. Our approach is designed to recover more cell-free DNA input per blood draw, which has the potential to make liquid biopsies far more widespread and clinically actionable.
— Annie Murphy, President and CEO, Amplifyer Bio
Amplifyer has raised $7 million in seed funding led by Pillar VC to improve liquid biopsies through boosting ctDNA yield with humanized priming agents. At the 2026 ctDNA International Symposium, Amplifyer shared significant milestones from designing and screening 74 humanized DNA-binding antibodies. Highlights include:
- Multiple humanized candidates outperformed the academic antibody, achieving greater than 20-fold increases in ctDNA recovery two hours after administration.
- A humanized candidate achieved up to 100-fold recovery in ctDNA.
- Priming produced significantly better sensitivity for cancer detection with a 16-probe panel and more comprehensive molecular profiling.
- cfDNA binding is tumor-agnostic and confirmed across a diverse set of human cancer cell lines.
- Whole-genome sequencing confirmed that some candidates preserved cfDNA fragmentomic features and did not introduce GC bias.
This is the first time we've shown a humanized priming agent driving ctDNA recovery in vivo, and the effect sizes are substantially larger than anything we saw with our earlier academic antibody. An increase of this magnitude won't just be an incremental gain in test performance, but could mean shifting a signal that's below the limit of detection for many patients to one a clinician can act on. The results from this study will allow us to advance a lead priming agent candidate into clinical development.
— Carmen Martin-Alonso, Founding Scientist, Amplifyer Bio
About Amplifyer Bio
Amplifyer Bio, Inc. is developing technology of transformative potential for the liquid biopsy field. The company is focused on the development of novel priming agents that sit upstream of liquid biopsy diagnostics, improving test performance. Amplifyer Bio's first program will be focused on increasing cfDNA in blood for cancer diagnostics. This will provide both physicians and patients higher quantity and quality of genomic information related to their cancer, with the aim of improving clinical outcomes. Amplifyer Bio was spun out of MIT and the Broad Institute, building on work from the labs of Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, Dr. Chris Love and Dr. Viktor Adalsteinsson.