AXO Science: The EIC Accelerator Semen Spray That Reached Police

Semen is the trace that most often carries an attacker's DNA after a rape, and it is also one of the hardest to find at a scene. Investigators usually sweep rooms with forensic lamps that make many body fluids and fibres glow, then send a pile of swabs to the laboratory and wait. AXO Science, a biotech company in the Lyon area, sells a spray that makes only human semen light up. In January 2020 the European Innovation Council chose its Themis project in the EIC Accelerator pilot, and CORDIS lists an EU contribution of €1,738,160 towards a total cost of €2,483,086.25 to scale up the spray and take it to police forces worldwide.

Six years later the product exists and is on sale. A US forensic supplier, Tri-Tech Forensics, lists the STK Sperm Tracker range, including the spray, at $658.90 to $3,850.00 depending on format, and the French scientific police published an evaluation in 2023 calling it "a useful tool for semen detection". What cannot be seen is the business behind it. The company's grant application promised 17% of a €134 million market by 2025 and twice as many staff by 2022, and its accounts, filed every year, carry a confidentiality declaration.

Who AXO Science Is

The Commission's list of winners of the 8 January 2020 cut-off names "AXO SCIENCE" in Lyon, with the project Themis, a grant, and the description "Disruptive solution for sexual criminal identification". The list gives no website and names no partner company for the project. CORDIS identifies the beneficiary as AXO SCIENCE SAS, an SME at 34 rue du Mail in Lyon. The French register matches both: AXO SCIENCE, SIREN 523 986 834, is a research company in biotechnology created on 20 July 2010, now based in Villeurbanne, according to Annuaire des Entreprises, and Societe.com records that its president moved the registered office from 34 rue du Mail in Lyon to Villeurbanne on 20 January 2020. Its websites are axoscience.com and sperm-tracker.com.

The company did not start in forensics. Its first business, according to its diagnostics page, was HIFI Blood 96, an automated system for genotyping rare blood groups, and it took part in FAPIC, a Horizon 2020 consortium on rapid pathogen identification, with an EU contribution to AXO Science of €1,052,675, according to CORDIS. The forensic line came out of years of research "in collaboration with the French Scientific Police (SNPS)", the company says on its forensic page; the EU's Horizon Magazine reported that the Lyon forensics laboratory had asked AXO Science for help about a decade before 2023.

How the Spray Works

STK Spray is an acid phosphatase test that can be used directly on a surface. Acid phosphatase (AP) tests for semen can be run in a controlled laboratory, but they "are not appropriate for direct crime scene investigations", the authors of the French police study write. The study, by the Lyon laboratory of France's national scientific police service and published in the Journal of Forensic Research in 2023, describes STK Spray as "an AP-spray test for non-textile items". Investigators mix the solution on location, spray the area and look at it under ultraviolet light, where semen shows as a blue glow, according to Horizon Magazine. The lamp maker Foster + Freeman notes that the manufacturer recommends a UV source peaking at 365 to 366 nm. A paper version, STK Lab, is used for fabrics, and STK Skin for victims' skin and hair.

The established alternative is the alternative light source, a forensic lamp that makes many substances fluoresce. It is fast but not specific, which produces both false positives and missed stains, the police study says. The CORDIS summary claims that lamps miss 90% of sperm traces and that STK Spray finds all of them. The police evaluation is more measured: across 32 surfaces it found the spray specific, able to detect pure semen spots down to 1 µL and dilutions down to 1/20, and more sensitive than two lamps on diluted stains, but it also found that the signal "may be blocked by feces or blood", that grey vinyl flooring gave mixed results, and it recommends using the spray "on its own and in addition to ALS". The authors work for the same police service that co-developed the technology, so the study is not fully independent of it.

What Themis Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Themis followed a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 study, Sex-Assault-ID, which ran from August 2018 to January 2019 and took the spray to technology readiness level 4, validated in the laboratory, according to its CORDIS report. The Themis grant agreement was signed on 8 June 2020 and the project ran from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2022. Its objective was to scale up the spray and "prepare for a massive commercialisation of the product worldwide", and it set out business targets: a 17% share of a €134 million sperm detection market by 2025, a doubling of headcount by 2022, and two subsidiaries overseas by 2025.

The final periodic report says the technical work was done. It lists performance studies on sensitivity and specificity, a patent filing, tests of more than 15 commercial UV lamps, a stability study, the development of STK Skin, and production facilities validated for ISO 18385, the standard for keeping forensic products free of human DNA. It says the company recruited a US-based forensic expert, attended 18 exhibitions and contacted more than 60 key opinion leaders, and that "STK Spray is now available to help forensic experts all over the world". The results page lists four deliverables and one peer-reviewed paper, a 2021 Japanese study. On the business side, the report restates forecasts instead of results: a 23% share of the global semen screening market in 2025 and a product "really taking off" in 2023. It gives no sales figure.

1. Scale up STK Spray and launch it worldwideDeliveredSold by Tri-Tech Forensics in the US; in use in Europe, the Americas, Japan and China, per Horizon Magazine.
2. Validation and DNA-free production (ISO 18385)DeliveredValidated per the CORDIS report; the company states ISO 18385 certification.
3. Skin and hair variant (STK Skin)DeliveredDeveloped in Themis; launched 2023, per the company.
4. 17% of a €134M market by 2025Not shownNo sales figure published; accounts filed confidentially.
5. Double the headcount by 2022Not shownNo hiring announced; 3 to 5 staff in 2024, per the register.
6. Two overseas subsidiaries by 2025One claimedThe company lists "AXO Science Inc. in the USA" in 2023; not confirmed elsewhere.

The project ended on schedule, and the company's own research page describes Themis as running from 2020 to 2023 with a budget of "2.5 M€", close to the €2.48 million total cost on CORDIS. The product the EU paid to scale up was delivered. The growth that justified a €1.74 million grant has not been shown.

What AXO Science Has Achieved Since the Award

The clearest results are in forensic practice. Horizon Magazine reported in January 2023 that France's National Gendarmerie had used the spray to confirm semen in a 25-year-old case, and that police in Reno, Nevada, had charged a man with a 2014 sexual assault with its help. The company's publication list includes validation posters and papers from the FBI laboratory (2021), the French Gendarmerie's forensic institute (2021), Syracuse University (2022), the Los Angeles Police Department (2023), Singapore's Home Team Science and Technology Agency (2023), the Institute of Legal Medicine in Düsseldorf (published in Rechtsmedizin in 2025) and the University of Palermo (2026). These are evaluations by laboratories, not purchase announcements, and no customer contract or order volume has been published.

Distribution runs through specialist resellers. Besides Tri-Tech in the US, the company's news feed showed its Argentine distributor, QUIALEDO, demonstrating the product at a regional criminalistics congress in September 2026, and the company also shared a post by the German forensic supplier coloprint on the annual meeting of the German Society for Legal Medicine the same month. The company's research page says a Eurostars project with the Italian swab maker Copan, STKFLOQSwab, ran from 2023 to 2025 with a budget of €1 million to develop a ready-to-use swab that reveals semen, and that it led to a demonstrator; no second source for the project could be found.

The Money

AXO Science has filed annual accounts every year since 2011, most recently for 2024 on 4 July 2025, but since the 2014 accounts each filing has carried a confidentiality declaration under article L. 232-25 of the French Commercial Code, according to the BODACC notices. Revenue, profit and equity are therefore not public. One signal of strain is: on 28 October 2020, four months into Themis, an extraordinary general meeting decided "not to dissolve the company although its equity is below half of the share capital" (translated), according to Societe.com; this record could not be confirmed from a second source. Whether the equity has since been rebuilt is not public. The share capital is still €50,000, according to Annuaire des Entreprises.

No equity round has been announced, and the company is not in the EIC Fund portfolio, which is consistent with its grant-only award. The staff figures disagree: the national register gives a band of 3 to 5 employees for 2024, Societe.com shows 6 to 9, and the Lyonbiopole directory, undated, says 9. None of them suggests the doubled team the grant application planned. A subsidiary, AXO SCAN, created in March 2021 with AXO Science as its president, was wound up with AXO Science as liquidator and closed on 31 May 2023, according to the national company search and Societe.com.

Where AXO Science Stands Now

AXO Science is active. Its STK products are still sold and demonstrated, and in April 2026 it launched SynDiag as project leader, a three-year regional France 2030 project with a budget of €3 million, including a €1.9 million subsidy from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and the French state, to build a remote diagnostic platform that identifies up to 45 respiratory pathogens in one test, according to the consortium's press release. The partners are Soladis by EFOR, the International Centre for Infectiology Research and the university hospital of Saint-Étienne; the release does not say how much of the subsidy goes to AXO Science. It builds on SurVir, a 2022 to 2024 regional project that the company's research page lists at €1.2 million.

The pivot is a plan rather than a result: SynDiag has just started, and the forensic line is still the only product range the company actively promotes. This article therefore treats AXO Science as active, not pivoted.

Why Europe Should Care

Sexual violence is now a matter of EU law. Directive (EU) 2024/1385 on combating violence against women and domestic violence, which entered into force on 13 June 2024 and must be transposed by 14 June 2027, requires member states to set up rape and sexual violence crisis centres that help victims with "the preservation and documentation of evidence", and to investigate such offences effectively and preserve a record of the evidence, according to the European Parliament's Legislative Observatory summary. Tools that find biological evidence faster at a scene and on a victim's body serve that goal directly. The SynDiag release, for its part, presents the company's diagnostics project as a way to strengthen national sovereignty against epidemic and pandemic risks.

The Verdict

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