AbilityPharma's EIC Accelerator Project: Cancer Pill Against Data

Pancreatic cancer kills more people in the EU than all but two other cancers and has the worst survival of any cancer type, according to the final report of the EU project this article examines. For metastatic disease, the standard first treatment is still chemotherapy, usually the four-drug regimen FOLFIRINOX. Ability Pharmaceuticals, a Barcelona biotech that trades as AbilityPharma, set out to add a pill to it.

The European Commission's list of winners of the 8 January 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot names "Ability Pharma" alone for PanC-ASAP, with blended finance; no partner company is listed. The company put the award at €5 million, about half grant and half equity, a split Catalonia Health also reported. The plan was simple to state: finish a Phase 2b trial of its drug ABTL0812, then license it to a large pharmaceutical company. Six years later the trial is finished, the main goal was missed, and no licence has been announced.

Where AbilityPharma Stands Now

The company is active. Empresia lists it as "activa", with accounts filed for 2024 and a new officer registered in the Official Gazette of the Commercial Register (BORME) on 25 February 2026, and Infoempresa also shows it as active, with its last BORME notice on 4 March 2026. On 14 November 2024 the register recorded a capital increase of €468,388, raising share capital to €2,264,180, according to Empresia and Infonif. The same entry added Shermaine Tilley, who spoke for CTI Life Sciences in the 2024 round announcement, to the board.

The company is small. Empresia gives 10 employees and annual sales of €1 million to €2.5 million; Infoempresa gives 1 to 9 employees and sales below €2 million. Detailed accounts are not free to view, so its losses and cash cannot be checked here.

In June 2026 the EU's Horizon Europe programme started PHOENIX, a six-year project coordinated by the Vall d'Hebron research institute in Barcelona, with an EU contribution of €8,468,780.31, of which €1,892,625 goes to AbilityPharma. It will test the same drug in children with relapsed neuroblastoma and other aggressive solid tumours, in about 50 patients, according to Catalonia Health.

The Technology: Making Tumour Cells Digest Themselves

Autophagy is the process by which a cell breaks down its own components. Cancer cells usually use it to survive stress. ABTL0812, which the WHO named ibrilatazar in July 2024, pushes that process so far that the tumour cell dies, while sparing healthy cells, according to CORDIS. Wikipedia's entry describes the mechanism: the drug activates the PPAR-alpha and PPAR-gamma receptors, raises expression of the TRIB3 gene and so blocks the PI3K/AKT/mTOR growth pathway.

That is different from the drugs that dominate pancreatic cancer care. FOLFIRINOX attacks dividing cells in general. AbilityPharma's bet was that a pill with a separate mechanism and few side effects could be added on top and make the chemotherapy work better. The drug holds orphan drug designations for pancreatic cancer from the EMA and the FDA, which brings market exclusivity if it is ever approved.

What PanC-ASAP Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

PanC-ASAP ran from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2023, with an EU contribution of €2,325,865.38 towards a total cost of €3,322,666.25, according to CORDIS. The company's final report names two objectives: complete the next stage of clinical development of ABTL0812, and commercialise the results through a licensing agreement with a major pharmaceutical company.

Neither was finished inside the project. The report admits "significant delays in the initiation of Phase 2b" and says the company added hospitals to speed up recruitment. When the project closed, "over 80%" of the patients were enrolled, and the study was "expected to be completed by September 2024". The report also records real work: a new capsule formulation replaced a liquid that caused taste problems and throat discomfort, more than 100,000 capsules had been given to about 100 patients without safety issues, and regulators in Spain, France, the US and Israel had approved the trial.

Recruitment of all 140 patients was announced in February 2024, with unblinded results for the primary endpoint, progression-free survival, due by the end of 2024, according to ASEBIO, the Spanish biotech association. A month later the company and Clinical Trials Arena repeated that timeline and said the aim was to have the drug available to patients by 2028.

The results came in May 2026, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. According to the company's press release, the trial did not meet its primary endpoint in the full intent-to-treat population. In an exploratory analysis of patients with ECOG performance status 0, the fittest group, median progression-free survival was 11.1 months with the drug against 6.5 months with placebo, and overall survival 19.3 months against 12.0 months. The release gives no hazard ratios, p-values or subgroup size. The ASCO abstract (Journal of Clinical Oncology, volume 44, abstract 4218) could not be opened for this article, so these figures rest on the company's account.

1. Run the Phase 2b trial in pancreatic cancerLateAbout 80% enrolled at project end in June 2023; full recruitment February 2024; results May 2026.
2. Show better efficacy than FOLFIRINOX aloneNot achievedPrimary endpoint not met in all patients, per the company's ASCO 2026 release.
3. License the drug to a major pharma companyNot achievedNo licensing deal announced by October 2026.
4. Prepare EMA and FDA documents for a Phase 3Not achievedThe report says the package was collected; no Phase 3 has been announced.
5. New capsule formulationDeliveredUsed in the trial, per the CORDIS final report.
6. Approvals in four countriesDeliveredSpain, France, US and Israel, per CORDIS; 23 hospitals per ASEBIO.

The Money Behind the Trial

The equity half of the award did arrive. On 1 December 2021 the company announced that the EIC Fund had joined its capital with an investment commitment of €2.5 million, of which €850,000 had been paid, with "an additional investment of 2 M €" due on development or funding milestones. Those two figures add up to €2.85 million, not €2.5 million; the release does not explain the difference. Ability Pharmaceuticals is listed in the official EIC Fund portfolio, which gives no amount or date.

The grant was one of several sources. SciClone Pharmaceuticals, which has held the drug's rights for Greater China since 2016, became a shareholder in December 2020 with a commitment of $3 million, $1 million of it in 2020. In March 2024 a €7 million round from CTI Life Sciences Fund, Inveready, the EIC Fund, Fitalent, CDTI Innvierte, family offices and crowdfunding investors, was raised to fully finance the trial, according to ASEBIO and the company. Public money also came from the US: ASEBIO cites $1.9 million from a US NIH R01 orphan drug programme, while the company's press list headlines a €1.6 million FDA grant in October 2020. The two may describe the same grant in different currencies; that could not be confirmed.

The other cancers have produced better-looking but weaker evidence. In June 2025 the company reported that, in a single-arm Phase 1/2a trial of 40 patients with squamous lung cancer, median overall survival was 22.5 months against 11.3 months in historical controls. Comparisons with historical controls are not randomised, and the randomised, placebo-controlled pancreatic trial did not confirm a benefit in all patients.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's Mission on Cancer, which is integrated with Europe's Beating Cancer Plan, aims to improve the lives of more than 3 million people by 2030. Pancreatic cancer is where progress has been slowest, and Europe has few independent companies taking new mechanisms into randomised trials. The EU has kept backing this one: after the EIC grant and equity, the Cancer Mission's PHOENIX project now funds the drug's first trial in children.

The record also shows the limit of what an EIC award can buy in drug development. A three-year grant and a minority equity stake paid for part of a trial that took almost six years to report. The licensing deal that was meant to repay the bet depended on a clear trial win, and that did not come.

The Verdict

AbilityPharma has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.