Developing blood-based cancer detection and monitoring tests for local laboratories
Cancer can develop or return before symptoms make it apparent, delaying investigation and treatment. Blood-based testing must distinguish small tumour-derived signals from the DNA released by healthy cells. Repeated tissue sampling can be invasive, while low tumour levels make early detection and monitoring difficult.
Aíma is developing research-use-only blood tests for early cancer detection and monitoring after treatment. Its analysis is designed to help laboratories identify tumour-derived DNA and deliver results locally, bringing less invasive testing closer to patients.
What stands out about Aíma
In two-centre research validation, Exís detected 220 of 259 cancer cases and correctly classified 173 of 192 healthy controls.
Themélio internal validation: 54.5% detected-or-atypical sensitivity and 98.2% specificity in 77 early lung/bladder cancers and 224 controls.
Imagenome, part of INOVIE, completed an 11-sample blinded evaluation of Aíma using its own nanopore sequencer in March 2026.
In an eight-sample technical study, Aíma tumour scores from Illumina 5-Base and nanopore sequencing correlated at Pearson r = 0.978.
Co-founder Michael Blum built a biostatistics and bioinformatics career at CNRS and founded the Grenoble Data Institute in 2016.
Signed an MoU with Eurobio Scientific to support international deployment of Exís through its commercial network and technical expertise.
Collaborates with Hospices Civils de Lyon on a liquid-biopsy cancer-risk score using nearly 300 patient samples.
Co-founder Romain Boidot leads molecular biology at Centre Georges-François Leclerc and established its next-generation sequencing platform.
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