Precision Medicine Online’s Catherine Shaffer sits down with Helio Genomics to explore how the company is applying deep learning and generative AI to build a new generation of precise cancer diagnostics — starting with the liver.
About the interview
Helio Genomics has already shown what artificial intelligence can do in the clinic with HelioLiver, its blood test for the early detection of liver cancer. In this conversation with Precision Medicine Online’s Catherine Shaffer, the company looks past that first product to a bigger ambition: using deep learning and generative AI to build a whole family of precise, blood-based cancer diagnostics.
The discussion explores how Helio’s approach works, why the same underlying technology can extend to cancers beyond the liver, and where generative AI could accelerate the discovery of new diagnostic signatures — all while the company continues readying its liver cancer test for the U.S. market.
Beyond the liver: the MESA platform
Helio’s ambitions are already showing up in the literature. In Genome Medicine, Helio Genomics (formerly Helio Health) published results assessing an AI-driven platform called MESA — multimodal epigenetic sequencing analysis — as a colorectal cancer screening tool.
Rather than leaning on a single signal, MESA pairs cell-free DNA (cfDNA) methylation analysis with machine-learning methods to surface the biomarker signatures associated with cancer in its earliest stages. It reads four complementary parameters from the blood:
- cfDNA methylation — chemical marks on DNA that help switch genes on or off
- Nucleosome occupancy — the positioning of DNA around its packaging proteins
- Nucleosome fuzziness — how tightly or loosely those positions are defined (a measure of delocalization)
- Windowed protection score — signal from the regions surrounding gene promoters and polyadenylation sites
Reading these dimensions together gives Helio’s models a richer, more reliable picture of whether cancer may be present — the same multi-signal philosophy behind HelioLiver, now aimed at new indications.
Why it matters
Catching cancer earlier, from a simple blood draw, is where treatment options are widest and outcomes are best. By turning a proven AI platform toward additional cancers, Helio is working toward a future in which routine, accessible screening can reach far more patients than today’s imaging- and procedure-based methods allow.