Did the EIC Accelerator Pay Off for Aquilón CyL's Cattle Vaccine?

Bovine viral diarrhoea is the most common viral disease of European cattle, its developer argued, and no vaccine on the market let vets tell a vaccinated animal from an infected one. In January 2019 the European Commission picked Aquilón CyL, a spin-off of the University of León in Spain, to fix that with a recombinant "marker" vaccine built on virus-like particles. Under the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, the EU put €1,554,729.75 into the project, called BoVLP-BVD. The plan was to take the vaccine to the edge of the market and license it to a veterinary drug company.

No such licence has been announced. The project closed in January 2022 with calf and rabbit trials, a 30 litre fermentation run and a patent application, according to its final CORDIS report. In June 2026 Ceva Animal Health, which calls itself the world's fifth-largest animal health company, acquired Aquilón. Its announcement is about a pig vaccine and does not mention cattle.

Where Aquilón Stands Now: Part of Ceva

Aquilón is no longer independent. Ceva announced the takeover on 9 June 2026, saying Aquilón's scientific team would join its research organisation and naming "the first and only European commercial vaccine" against Brachyspira hyodysenteriae, the bacterium behind swine dysentery, as the asset. The University of León called it the first time one of its spin-offs had been bought by an international company, according to El Español. The Seguranza fund, managed by Clave Capital and backed by the regional government of Castilla y León, announced its exit on 10 June, according to Capital & Riesgo. No price has been published.

The register confirms the deal. On 6 August 2026 the board, which included the University of León professor Pedro Rubio and Grupo Ferrer Internacional, was replaced by three joint administrators, and on 26 August Ceva Salud Animal SA was registered as sole shareholder, according to the Official Gazette of the Mercantile Register (BORME) of 2 September 2026 and the register summary at Empresia. One register aggregator, Infonif, still names Labiana Health as the parent company; that conflicts with the BORME entry, and no source was found showing when, or whether, Labiana held control.

The Technology: A Vaccine That Leaves a Mark

Bovine viral diarrhoea virus is a pestivirus that causes abortions, infertility, immune suppression and a fatal "mucosal disease" in cattle, Aquilón says on its project page, where it puts losses during outbreaks at €100 to €400 per animal and over €1 billion a year in Europe. Countries that eradicate it, such as Switzerland, Denmark and Ireland, rely on testing herds and removing persistently infected animals, according to an editorial in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. Vaccination complicates that testing when vaccinated and infected animals carry the same antibodies.

Aquilón's answer was a DIVA vaccine, short for "differentiating infected from vaccinated animals". Its 2022 patent application describes chimeric virus-like particles: hollow protein shells built from the VP2 protein of infectious bursal disease virus, decorated with selected fragments of the BVD virus E2 protein. The shells contain no viral genetic material, and the CORDIS report says they were produced in the yeast Pichia pastoris. The particle technology came from VLPbio of Valladolid, which granted Aquilón an exclusive licence for the project, according to Capital & Riesgo in 2019. The aim was a non-live vaccine covering both BVD virus types, with its own companion antibody tests.

What BoVLP-BVD Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project ran from 1 May 2019 to 31 January 2022 and followed a €50,000 Phase 1 feasibility study in 2017. The Commission's list of Phase 2 winners names Aquilón alone for BoVLP-BVD, with no partner company. The 2019 press release reported by Capital & Riesgo said the project would draw on Eurofunding, BDi Biotechnology of Valladolid for industrial development, scientists in Barcelona and León, and University of León animal facilities. CORDIS sets the goal as taking the vaccine from technology readiness level 6 to 8: commercial-scale manufacturing, plus safety, efficacy and DIVA performance in cattle, ending in a licence agreement.

The report's summary says Aquilón "developed one vaccine to TRL8 stage". The detail beneath it is more modest. Candidate particles were made at 1 litre scale and one was run in a 30 litre fermenter "as first approach to an industrial scaling". Two calf trials measured immune responses, antibodies and neutralising activity and confirmed the DIVA marker, and three rabbit trials tested safety and dose. The report describes no trial in which vaccinated cattle were exposed to the virus, and it says the results had "awake[d] the interest" of industrial partners, not that a licence was signed.

1. Vaccine prototype with DIVA markerDeliveredCalf trials confirmed the marker and antibody response, per the CORDIS report.
2. Companion diagnostic testsDeliveredCommercial ELISA tests adapted and in-house tests validated, per CORDIS.
3. Commercial-scale manufacturingPartlyOne 30 litre fermentation run; a process "able to be transferred" to a GMP maker was defined.
4. Efficacy in cattleUnverifiedImmune responses measured; no protection or challenge results published.
5. Patent protectionPartlyEP21382933.6 and WO2023062182A1 filed; Google Patents lists the international application as ceased and no national filings.
6. Licence to a veterinary drug companyNot achievedNone announced by Aquilón, Ceva or the press.
7. Market approval around 2025Not achievedNo BVD vaccine from Aquilón is authorised.

What Aquilón Achieved After the Award

Aquilón's real success came from the pig side of its pipeline. Biobhyo, an inactivated vaccine against swine dysentery, received a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency's veterinary committee on 12 June 2025 and EU-wide authorisation on 30 July 2025, with Aquilón as marketing authorisation holder, according to the EU's Union Product Database. Diario de León reported that the vaccine took 12 years and €4 million to develop, and that a porcine brucellosis test from Aquilón had been approved in February 2023. Aquilón's own website also lists a Glässer disease vaccine and probiotics for piglets and poultry in development, and diagnostic services for pig farms.

The company stayed small. Empresia reports 5 employees in the latest filed accounts, for 2024, and Iberinform classes it as a micro-enterprise with 0 to 10 staff and revenue of up to €1.5 million. Exact revenue, results and equity figures are behind paywalls and could not be verified. The final CORDIS report says the project led Aquilón to hire "a high-profile researcher".

Private money arrived in small rounds. The company launched in 2012 with €2 million, including a €430,000 loan from Genoma España, according to Biocat. The Seguranza fund led a €1.1 million round in December 2017, and Laboratorios Labiana joined a €546,000 round in July 2019, raised partly to cover Aquilón's own share of the EIC project. Register filings show small capital increases in June 2019 and January 2024, which took the registered share capital from €10,614 to €13,249. Aquilón is not named in the EIC Fund portfolio, and as a grant-only award BoVLP-BVD carried no EIC equity.

Why It Matters for Europe

Better vaccines fit two EU goals. The 2020 Farm to Fork Strategy targets a 50% cut in sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals and aquaculture by 2030, as reported by Food Safety News and welcomed by the European Parliament. The EU Animal Health Law lets member states run approved BVD programmes and gain official "BVD-free" status, with strict testing thresholds, according to Agriland. The Frontiers editorial notes that eradication of BVD is not mandatory under the law. Countries that vaccinate during a test-and-remove programme need a way to tell vaccinated animals from infected ones, and that is the gap a DIVA vaccine would fill. Aquilón's Biobhyo, for its part, gave EU pig farmers a first authorised vaccine against swine dysentery, which Ceva says helps reduce dependence on antibiotics.

The Verdict

Aquilón CyL and Ceva Animal Health have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.