Elthera's EIC Accelerator Bet on an L1CAM Cancer Drug, Revisited

Elthera set out to build a cancer company and ended up building a cancer drug for someone else. The Swiss start-up was selected in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 round of 9 January 2019, the Horizon 2020 pilot that preceded today's EIC Accelerator, and received an EU grant of €2,495,176.25 to make a clinical-grade batch of its antibody against L1CAM, a protein on the surface of pancreatic and ovarian tumours, according to CORDIS. Four years later it had licensed the antibody worldwide to LegoChem Biosciences of South Korea, and the EU project was terminated. In June 2026 Japan's Ono Pharmaceutical, which bought the rights from LegoChem, started the first human trial of the resulting drug, according to ClinicalTrials.gov and Edaily.

Elthera itself has gone quiet. Its last entry in the Swiss commercial register, in July 2023, moved its seat from the Schlieren biotech park near Zurich to a domicile agency in Zug and removed three board members, according to the federal register Zefix and North Data. The company has announced nothing since the licence deal.

A Licensing Shell With a Drug in the Clinic

Elthera AG is still registered as an existing company. The Zefix record shows no publication after 7 July 2023, when the seat moved to Zug, Dominik Escher stepped down as chair, Bettina Ernst and Jacques Gaudreault left the board, and Annette Schmidt became chair. Its address is now c/o Domizilagentur GmbH, Baarerstrasse 43, a service address rather than a laboratory. North Data lists two later patent publications under the company's name, in September 2023 and September 2024, both on L1CAM-binding molecules; it lists no other event. The company website still gives the old Schlieren address, and its newest items are conference appearances in 2022 and the 2023 licence. Swiss private companies do not have to publish their accounts, so staff, revenue and cash after 2020 cannot be checked.

On these facts Elthera is dormant: not dissolved, but with no public activity of its own for more than three years. What keeps its name alive is the licence. Under the February 2023 deal, Elthera is entitled to an upfront payment, development, regulatory and commercial milestones, and royalties on sales, according to BioSpectrum Asia and Startupticker. None of the amounts has been disclosed, and neither has whether any milestone was paid to Elthera when the drug entered the clinic.

The Technology: Turning a Tumour Adhesion Protein Into a Target

L1CAM, the L1 cell adhesion molecule, normally helps nerve cells grow and migrate. Many tumours, including pancreatic, ovarian, lung, breast and colon cancers, also carry it, and there it promotes cell growth, metastasis, blood vessel formation and resistance to chemotherapy, the CORDIS project summary says. The antibodies go back to the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, where a group led by Hans-Peter Altevogt developed antibodies against L1 and showed anti-tumour activity in animals, according to a 2006 DKFZ release. Elthera announced in 2019 that it held an exclusive licence from the DKFZ, according to its grant announcement.

The plan changed during the project. The application described a humanised antibody that blocks L1CAM's effects directly, and Elthera's own profile describes two formats: a bispecific antibody that binds L1CAM on tumour cells and CD3 on T cells, pulling immune cells onto the tumour, and an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), which uses the antibody to deliver a toxic payload into the cancer cell. According to the final CORDIS report, Elthera spent the first year optimising the bispecific and the second on the ADC, and the ADC became the clinical candidate. The approach is not new in itself: ADCs are an established drug class. What made the asset different was the target, and LegoChem called the antibody "first-in-class" when it bought it.

What the EU Grant Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 4 June 2019, and the project was to run from 1 September 2019 to 29 February 2024, with a total cost of €4,251,412.50. Its stated purpose was to "establish a GMP manufacturing process and produce a GMP batch" of the antibody, the clinical-grade material needed for regulatory toxicology and first trials in patients. In June 2019 chief executive Anne Schmidt told Venturelab that the money would let the company "seamlessly" start developing the manufacturing process and finish a companion diagnostic to pick patients whose tumours carry L1CAM. The Commission's list of winners names Elthera of Schlieren as the only company on the project.

The report describes what was done instead. By month 27, Elthera had picked an ADC, named ELT048, with "excellent anti-tumor efficacy" in cell and mouse tests, and ran an exploratory safety study in cynomolgus monkeys in which it was "well tolerated" with no treatment-related changes in the tissues examined. Then, on 13 February 2023, it signed the licence with LegoChem. CORDIS records that the project was terminated on 10 March 2023, almost a year before its planned end. The report does not mention a GMP manufacturing process, a GMP batch or a companion diagnostic, and none has been announced by Elthera or its licensees.

1. Clinical candidate selected and characterisedDeliveredADC ELT048 nominated, with mouse efficacy data, per the CORDIS report.
2. Early safety dataDeliveredExploratory study in monkeys found it well tolerated, per CORDIS. No peer-reviewed paper found.
3. GMP manufacturing process and GMP batchNot achievedNot mentioned in the report and never announced; the project ended a year early.
4. Companion diagnosticUnverifiedPromised in 2019; no result published.
5. Partner a large company for further developmentDeliveredWorldwide licence to LegoChem, February 2023, per BioSpectrum Asia.
6. Entry into clinical trialsBy the licenseeOno started a Phase 1 trial in June 2026, more than three years after Elthera left the programme.

The partnering goal was written into the project from the start: the report says the aim was to show efficacy and "partner the further development steps and commercialization with a large pharma company". Measured against that, the project worked. Measured against the manufacturing work the grant was awarded for, it did not: the step the EU paid to bring forward was left to the licensee, and the money was spent on finding the candidate and the partner. How much of the €2.5 million was paid before termination is not public.

What Happened to the Antibody

LegoChem, which has since renamed itself LigaChem Biosciences, attached its own ConjuAll linker and payload technology to the antibody and called the result LCB97. In October 2024 it licensed LCB97 to Ono Pharmaceutical in a deal worth up to $700 million in upfront and milestone payments plus royalties, less than two years after buying the antibody, according to BioSpectrum Asia and ApexOnco. The Korean outlet BioSpectator confirmed that the antibody came from Elthera. In November 2024 LigaChem disclosed a short-term milestone from Ono worth more than a tenth of its 2023 revenue of 34.1 billion won, according to BioSpectator.

Ono's trial, ONO-7429-01, is an open-label Phase 1 dose-escalation study in patients with advanced solid tumours, planned to enrol 80 people at 10 hospitals in Japan, with primary completion estimated for July 2028. The sources differ on the date: Edaily reports that Ono announced the start of recruitment through the Japanese registry on 8 June 2026, while ClinicalTrials.gov gives 19 June 2026 as the actual start date.

The Money

Elthera never announced a priced equity round. The register shows its nominal share capital rising from CHF 100,000 at registration to CHF 229,144.10 in June 2023, through capital increases in 2017, 2018 and 2021 and a final one from exercised options or conversion rights in May 2023. Because the shares have a par value of CHF 0.10, these figures say nothing about how much money investors put in. In October 2020, when Schmidt joined a Venturelab programme for China, the company had three employees, according to Venturelab. Startupticker also lists an earlier SME Instrument Phase 1 grant; CORDIS lists no such project under Elthera's name, so it could not be verified. Elthera does not appear on the EIC's page of EIC Fund investments, and its award was grant only.

Why Europe Should Care

The project summary on CORDIS puts the number of people in Europe affected by pancreatic and ovarian cancer at over 170,000; most pancreatic cancer patients die within a year of diagnosis, and ovarian tumours return in 80 to 90% of patients. The EU's Mission on Cancer, which works alongside Europe's Beating Cancer Plan, names treatment as one of its four objectives and aims to improve the lives of more than 3 million people by 2030. A working drug against these cancers is the kind of outcome both want.

Elthera's story also shows where the value of European drug research can end up. The antibody was discovered at a German public research centre, developed by a Swiss start-up with EU and Eurostars money, turned into an ADC by a Korean company, and is now tested by a Japanese drug maker in Japanese hospitals. Licensing early is often the rational choice for a three-person biotech with no money for clinical trials, and it got the drug into patients. But the clinical development, and most of the deal value, now sits outside Europe.

The Verdict

Elthera, LigaChem, Ono and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.