From Graduate Lab to Growing Company

Rachelle Turiello and Renna Nouwairi met as graduate students at UVA, both trained as analytical chemists, and walked into their first CvilleBioHub event in 2020, years before they founded a company together. What started as a way to meet other founders in the region became the foundation for everything that followed: their first major hire, their IP attorney, and their corporate counsel were all people they met through CvilleBioHub.

When they founded Avant Genomics in 2023, the path forward wasn’t always clear. As two scientists trained to gather every data point before making a decision, they had to learn to move forward without a perfect answer, something CvilleBioHub’s network of founders and advisors helped make possible.

The turning point came in August 2025, when Avant Genomics moved into the Commonwealth BioAccelerator. Since then, the company has raised more than $3.5 million, much of it through connections made at CvilleBioHub events, and begun scaling manufacturing from 12,000 units a year to 500,000.

Today, Avant Genomics is preparing for commercial launch. The company has advanced into Phase II manufacturing, secured letters of intent representing more than 150,000 annual liquid biopsy tests, and closed an oversubscribed seed financing round. For Rachelle and Renna, the lesson has stayed the same since their first CvilleBioHub event: don’t underestimate the value of a community that wants to see you succeed.