Avant Genomics raised more than $3 million to develop and scale its cartridge-based liquid biopsy sample preparation platform, Avant Source. The company says it automates cell-free DNA extraction from blood and compresses workflows from more than 50 manual steps to two, aiming to improve consistency for downstream cancer detection. The platform also automates bisulfite conversion, a critical step for epigenetic analyses. Avant Genomics said it will use the funding to continue development, scale manufacturing, and expand staffing, framing sample preparation as a primary source of real-world variability in liquid biopsy tests. Standardization and automation are increasingly central to commercialization because regulators and clinical teams expect repeatable performance across operators, sites, and specimen handling conditions.