Bacteromic, the EIC Accelerator and a Promise of Antibiotic Tests

When a patient has a bacterial infection, doctors often have to choose an antibiotic before the laboratory knows which drugs the bacteria resist. Bacteromic, a Warsaw company wholly owned by the listed diagnostics developer Scope Fluidics, set out to close that gap with a disposable cartridge of 640 tiny incubation chambers that tests one bacterial isolate against dozens of antibiotics at once. In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 5 June 2019, the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, it won an EU contribution of €1,926,671.25 towards a €2,752,387.50 project, according to CORDIS.

The project did what grants rarely manage: the system received a CE IVD mark in October 2021, two months before the project ended, as both Biznesradar and the CORDIS results summary report. CORDIS gave the market entry as the second quarter of 2022. The first revenue from system sales was reported by management in August 2026.

Bacteromic and Scope Fluidics

The EC's list of June 2019 winners names the beneficiary only as "BACTEROMIC" in Warsaw, with the website of Scope Fluidics, and lists no other partner for the project. The legal entity is Bacteromic sp. z o.o., a limited liability company registered on 3 March 2017. Its sole shareholder is Scope Fluidics, which holds all 762,100 shares, and its three board members, Piotr Garstecki, Marcin Izydorzak and Szymon Ruta, have run it since 2017, according to the Polish court register as shown by rejestr.io and North Data. Scope Fluidics itself was founded in 2010 at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, listed on NewConnect in 2017 and moved to the main market of the Warsaw Stock Exchange on 20 January 2023, according to Parkiet.

The group's model is to build a diagnostic platform in a dedicated company and then sell it. It did that once: in August 2022 Bio-Rad bought Curiosity Diagnostics, the Scope Fluidics company behind the rapid PCR|ONE system, for about $100 million in cash and up to $70 million in milestone payments, according to MassDevice and Bio-Rad's announcement. Bacteromic is meant to be the second such sale. In March 2026 Garstecki said the group plans "two strategic transactions by the end of 2028", one of them Bacteromic, according to Bankier, and the group hired the US advisory firm Perella Weinberg Partners for that deal in October 2025, as Parkiet and Strefa Inwestorów reported.

How the Test Works

An antibiotic susceptibility test (AST) grows the bacteria from a patient sample in the presence of different antibiotics and measures which drugs stop them. Manual methods are precise but slow and laborious, and automated systems "deliver limited information about short list of antimicrobials and often don't provide quantitative result", the company wrote in its final CORDIS report. Bacteromic's cartridge splits one sample into 640 separate chambers preloaded with antibiotics at different concentrations, an analyser follows growth in each chamber, and software trained on thousands of growth curves interprets the result; the report says the method agreed with a trained microbiologist's reading in more than 95% of cases. The CORDIS summary says one cartridge can test up to 60 antibiotics or 20 antibiotic combinations. Testing combinations, not only single drugs, is the feature the company pitched as new in its project objective.

The panels that reached the market are narrower than the chip. The first certified panel in 2021 covered 20 antibiotics for Enterobacterales, Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter and Staphylococcus, according to Biznesradar and the CORDIS report. The UNI panel certified under the new EU In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation in February 2026 covers 30 antibiotics and detects the ESBL resistance mechanism, according to Strefa Inwestorów; an earlier company announcement put the same panel at "up to 31". The UNI FAST panel certified in May 2026 covers 24 antibiotics, according to the company's current report.

Speed is the other gap. The EIC proposal promised to show "already in 4h" which antibiotic works. In May 2024 the company said its "fast detection" software aimed to cut the time from 16 hours to 6 to 8, according to Biznesradar, and the certified FAST panel gives results in 6 to 8 hours, according to Bankier and the May 2026 report. No independent peer-reviewed comparison with established systems could be found.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What It Delivered

The proposal asked for EU money to "optimize the design, prepare for mass production, validate the system in clinical trials, and certify it for successful commercialization", and forecast "more than 30 million cumulative profit by 2025", according to CORDIS. The project ran from 1 August 2019 to 31 December 2021. Its final report says the team redesigned the cartridge for injection moulding, built new versions of the analyser and filling device, set up pilot production for all parts of the system and obtained ISO 13485 certificates. Four external laboratories and one internal laboratory tested more than 1,000 samples, which allowed the company to register the system as an in vitro diagnostic device. Independent clinical testing showed more than 90% agreement across 20 antibiotics, Biznesradar reported.

1. Optimised cartridge, analyser and filling deviceDeliveredNew 640-chamber cartridge and devices, per the CORDIS report.
2. Clinical validationDeliveredMore than 1,000 samples in 5 laboratories.
3. CertificationDeliveredCE IVD in October 2021 and ISO 13485; CE-IVDR followed in 2026.
4. All clinically relevant antibiotics in one testPartly20 antibiotics in 2021, 30 in 2026; up to 52 planned.
5. Result in 4 hoursNot achievedCertified FAST panel needs 6 to 8 hours.
6. Mass production and market entry in Q2 2022Not achievedEarly access from late 2023, first sales in 2026, production line not validated.
7. Over 30 million cumulative profit by 2025Not achievedNet loss of PLN 19.3 million in 2025 alone.

On the technical goals the project delivered on time and with a certified product, which many grant projects never reach. What it did not deliver was the step the grant was meant to bridge to: a product sold at scale.

Four Years From Certificate to First Sale

After the 2021 certificate, Bacteromic did not launch. The company reworked its panel, ran an Early Access programme from the end of 2023 in two Polish centres and targeted certification under the EU In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation, which had replaced the old directive, for 2025, according to Biznesradar in May 2024. That date slipped too: an Ipopema analyst noted in late 2025 that the quarterly report no longer confirmed registration by year end, Parkiet wrote. The IVDR certificate for the UNI panel came in February 2026 and the one for the UNI FAST panel in May 2026, according to Bankier and Strefa Inwestorów.

Manufacturing has been the harder part. According to the 2025 financial statements summarised by rejestr.io, Bacteromic contracted BIT Analytical Instruments in Germany in 2025 to build analysers and filling devices, and BIT then filed for insolvency, with BIT Analytical Solutions taking over production. The same year it began building a semi-automatic panel line with microLiquid in Spain, part of TE Connectivity, before TE announced it would wind microLiquid down; Bacteromic moved the machines to Warsaw. In February 2026 the company planned a validated line in Warsaw at the start of the second half of 2026, Biznesradar reported. In May it said the line did not fit its premises and that it could not say when it would be validated, according to its current report. On 30 June 2026 it announced a new site and readiness "no later than the first half of 2027", Strefa Inwestorów reported. The stated capacity has changed with each announcement: 750,000 panels a year in February and March 2026, about 350,000 in June, with about 100,000 a year possible in house.

Sales run through distributors. In January 2026 Bacteromic signed agreements with Mefamed for Turkey and SC ELTA 90 Medical Research for Romania, and on 7 July 2026 a two-year exclusive agreement with Biomedica Medizinprodukte of Vienna for ten European countries, under which Biomedica buys systems and panels itself, according to Bankier and Strefa Inwestorów. No volumes or contract values have been published. A clinical study of a panel for positive blood cultures, aimed at sepsis, was contracted on 1 July 2026, and the company announced US patents in May and September 2026, according to the company website and MarketScreener. FDA clearance for an extended panel is targeted for mid-2027.

The Money

Bacteromic is funded by its parent. Scope Fluidics has raised its share capital 13 times since registration, from PLN 5,000 in 2017 to PLN 38.1 million in October 2026, according to the register entries listed by North Data and rejestr.io. For 2025 Bacteromic reported revenue of PLN 448,900, costs of PLN 19.8 million, a net loss of PLN 19.3 million and total assets of PLN 59.3 million, according to rejestr.io; the filed statements behind these figures could not be cross-checked with a second free source. Earlier years' accounts are filed but sit behind paywalls. Staff numbers are not public.

The parent says it has the cash. Scope Fluidics held PLN 156.9 million at the end of 2025 after raising more than PLN 64 million in a share issue in October 2025, and PLN 138 million at the end of March 2026, enough to fund the group to the end of 2027, according to Bankier and Strefa Inwestorów. The European Investment Bank approved a loan of about €15 million for Bacteromic's "next generation AST" project, with a total cost of about €40 million, on 5 August 2025, according to the EIB project page. In March 2026 Scope Fluidics said it had stopped working towards signing that loan and did not need extra money for its 2026 and 2027 goals, Bankier reported. Bacteromic does not appear in the EIC Fund portfolio, checked across all 16 pages of the list; the 2019 award was a grant only.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU has made antimicrobial resistance a policy target. The Council recommendation of 13 June 2023 sets five targets for 2030, among them a 20% cut in total human antibiotic consumption from 2019 levels; by 2022 consumption had fallen by only 2.5%, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and 3tres3. Faster, broader susceptibility tests are one way to move patients off empirical treatment, and the EIB loan approved for Bacteromic was filed under the EU's HERA health emergency instrument, according to the EIB. A European-built AST platform would also add a supplier in a field Bacteromic itself values at about $1 billion a year for automated tests, as its management told Biznesradar in 2021. The same June 2019 round funded Nanosynex, another rapid antibiotic test, whose market launch has also slipped.

The Verdict

Bacteromic and Scope Fluidics were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.