How ADmit Spent Its EIC Accelerator Grant on an Alzheimer's Test

Doctors can now confirm Alzheimer's pathology with a scan, a spinal tap or, increasingly, a blood test. What they still cannot do well is tell a patient with mild memory problems whether those problems will turn into dementia. ADmit Therapeutics, a spin-out of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) near Barcelona, built a blood test for exactly that question. It reads chemical marks on the DNA of mitochondria, the cell's power plants, and feeds them into a machine-learning model.

The European Commission selected the project, MAP-AD, in the EIC Accelerator pilot's March 2020 cut-off with blended finance, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names no other beneficiary for the project. CORDIS records an EU grant of €2,408,055 towards a total cost of €3,568,650, for a project that ran from 1 January 2021 to 31 March 2024. In August 2025 the test received its CE mark under Europe's in vitro diagnostics regulation. That is the main delivery. The pharmaceutical customers the proposal counted on, and the US approval the company raised money for, have not been announced.

Where ADmit Stands Now

ADmit is active. The Barcelona commercial register recorded two capital increases on 3 September 2026, taking its nominal share capital to €8,362, according to the BORME entries collected by Empresia; Infoempresa lists the company as active with its latest BORME notice on 11 September 2026. On 15 September 2026 the company announced a distribution agreement with HVD Life Sciences to take MAP-AD to "multiple geographies". It named no countries and disclosed no terms.

The company moved its registered office in August 2025 from Esplugues de Llobregat to Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Empresia shows. That address is also the laboratory named on its US CLIA certificate and on its EU quality certificate. ADmit is still small. eInforma reports 9 employees in 2024 and a negative result that year, and Empresia says annual turnover is below €500,000.

The Technology: Reading Mitochondrial DNA in Blood

Mitochondria carry their own small genome. ADmit's founding hypothesis, as the company described it in 2020 to Capital Riesgo, is that mitochondria malfunction before the amyloid and tau deposits that define Alzheimer's appear in the brain. The test measures methylation, small chemical tags on DNA, in the mitochondrial genome from a blood sample. Software then combines those readings with age, ApoE genotype and a standard cognitive score to estimate whether a patient with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) will progress to Alzheimer's dementia, according to the CE-mark announcement. The test is intended for adults aged 55 to 85.

The difference from the established tools is the question being asked. PET scans, spinal fluid tests and the newer p-tau blood tests show whether Alzheimer's pathology is present. MAP-AD gives a prognosis, and the company says it works regardless of a patient's amyloid status. "Predicting clinical progression has been very challenging," said Jordi Gascón, head of the memory unit at Bellvitge University Hospital and a co-founder, in an IDIBELL announcement; identifying the underlying pathology, by contrast, has been possible for years.

The peer-reviewed evidence is a single study. Published in iScience in August 2025 with Barrachina as senior author, it reports that a Random Forest model reached 83.2% accuracy on an independent test set, with 95.1% sensitivity and 70.7% specificity for spotting patients who progressed. The CORDIS report gives the same headline numbers from 600 samples drawn from Spanish hospitals and from US and Australian biobanks, along with a positive predictive value of 77% and a negative predictive value of 93%. The coverage in elDiario.es drew mainly on the hospital's account. No independent group has published a replication.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The CORDIS objective framed MAP-AD as a tool to pick the right patients for Alzheimer's drug trials, where it cites a failure rate of over 99%. ADmit would finish its algorithms and a dedicated software interface, run clinical validation with its hospital partners, and "deliver a finalized platform that is ready for commercial launch". It named Bellvitge University Hospital, Hospital Clinic de Barcelona, CITA-Alzheimer, Hospital Moisès Broggi, Hospital General de l'Hospitalet, Janssen and Roche as the expected early adopters. In 2020 the company told Capital Riesgo it aimed for regulatory approval and market launch in 2023.

The final periodic report, covering January 2022 to March 2024, says ADmit set up next-generation sequencing in house, earned ISO 13485 certification for its quality system, designed the reagent kit and software, completed analytical validation, and ran a multicentre clinical study despite recruitment delays caused by COVID-19. It also says the company had applied "to the European Medicines Agency to obtain regulatory approval". Diagnostic tests in the EU are certified by notified bodies rather than the EMA, and the certificate ADmit eventually received came from one, TÜV SÜD. The results page lists one conference poster and three patent applications, filed in 2015 and 2023.

1. Predictive algorithms and softwareDeliveredMAP-AD software certified as a Class C device in the TÜV SÜD certificate.
2. Clinical validation with hospital partnersDelivered600-sample multicentre study, published in iScience in 2025.
3. ISO 13485 quality systemDeliveredReported in CORDIS and listed by the company.
4. Approved, launch-ready test by 2023LateCE-IVDR certificate issued 26 August 2025, after the project ended.
5. Janssen and Roche as early adopters for trial recruitmentNot achievedNo pharmaceutical customer has been announced.
6. FDA approval for the US marketNot achievedNamed as a use of the 2023 round; no FDA decision announced. The lab holds a CLIA certificate instead.

On the science and the regulatory groundwork, the project delivered what it set out to do, in a period when COVID-19 disrupted patient recruitment. On the commercial side, the record is thinner. The proposal's business case rested on drug developers using MAP-AD to pick trial participants, and none has been named in public in the two and a half years since the project closed.

What ADmit Has Achieved Since the Award

The certificate is the main achievement. TÜV SÜD, notified body 0123, certified ADmit's quality management system under the IVDR on 26 August 2025, covering both the reagents and the software as Class C devices, with validity until 25 August 2030, according to the certificate. IDIBELL and Biotech Spain both reported the CE mark on 19 September 2025, and the company describes MAP-AD as the first prognostic test for Alzheimer's dementia. That claim to be first comes from the company and could not be independently checked.

For the US, ADmit announced on 4 December 2025 that its laboratory had received a CLIA certificate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, adding to CAP accreditation obtained in 2024. The certificate posted on its website, a certificate of accreditation for the Sant Feliu laboratory, is effective from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2028. A CLIA certificate allows a laboratory to test US patient samples. It is not an FDA approval of the test.

Since then the company has presented clinical validation data at the Spanish Society of Neurology's annual meeting in Seville in November 2025, according to its announcement, and signed the HVD Life Sciences agreement in September 2026. No sales figures, test volumes, prices or paying customers have been published.

The Money

The amount of the EIC award is reported in two ways. CORDIS shows a grant of €2,408,055. In August 2020 the company's announcement, reprinted by Capital Riesgo, spoke of €3.3 million from the Commission and said ADmit was one of 36 winners among 1,406 applications. Whether the gap of about €0.9 million was the planned equity component of the blended award could not be verified. The 36 and 1,406 figures also could not be matched to the Commission's published results for the cut-off.

The equity did arrive, three years later. In October 2023 ADmit closed a €5.4 million round led by Clave Capital's Clave Innohealth fund, with "relevant support" from the EIC Fund and the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation's Diagnostics Accelerator, plus Lavanda Ventures, Ship2B and WA4Steam, according to IDIBELL and Capital Riesgo. The CORDIS report names the EIC Fund among the investors, and ADmit appears on the EIC Fund's official portfolio. The EIC Fund's share of the round is not public. Separately, the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation lists a $1.9 million award to ADmit running from February 2023 to June 2026. By September 2025 the company said it had raised €10 million since it was founded.

The share register tracks this. Nominal capital rose from €4,206 to €6,898 in October 2024, when the commercial register also recorded new articles of association with a new class of shares and a board of directors replacing Barrachina as sole administrator, with Santiago Lozano, director of Clave Innohealth, registered as the representative of a corporate board member, Empresia shows. Smaller increases followed in November 2024, December 2025 and September 2026.

The filed accounts are thin. eInforma's free summary of the 2024 accounts shows total assets down 6.58% and equity down 6.68% from 2023, a return on assets of minus 13.85%, and a net loss equal to 80.74% of operating income. The full accounts are behind a paywall and were not reviewed, so revenue, losses and cash in euros could not be verified.

Why Europe Should Care

Dementia is among the EU's largest health burdens. The Commission estimates that nearly 8 million people in the EU had dementia in 2021, and its Joint Action on Dementia and Health, led by Spain with €4.5 million from EU4Health, makes early detection a core goal, according to the Commission. In September 2025 the European Parliament called for a dedicated EU strategy on Alzheimer's and dementia, Euronews reported.

The need for prognosis has also become more practical. In April 2025 the EU authorised its first anti-amyloid Alzheimer's drug, lecanemab, for patients with MCI or mild dementia whose amyloid pathology is confirmed, according to the European Medicines Agency. Tools that tell which MCI patients are likely to decline could help decide who gets further testing and treatment. A European-made, IVDR-certified test of that kind fits the EU's push to keep diagnostic know-how and laboratory capacity in Europe.

The Verdict

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