EpiEndo Used EIC Accelerator Money to Trial a Macrolide for COPD

EpiEndo Pharmaceuticals, founded in Reykjavik in January 2014, develops glasmacinal (code name EP395), an oral drug built on the structure of the antibiotic azithromycin but designed to have almost no antibacterial effect. The idea is to keep what doctors already use azithromycin for in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), fewer flare-ups and less airway inflammation, without breeding resistant bacteria. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's 9 October 2019 cut-off the company was selected with blended finance for BRONCHOTHELIN, a €3,578,020 project to take EP395 from the lab into its first human trial, with an EU grant of €2,500,000, according to CORDIS and the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names EpiEndo alone for the project, as "EPI-ENDO PHARMACEUTICALS EHF".

That trial happened. What has not happened is the step the application promised after it: a licensing deal with a large drug company in 2023. Seven years after selection, glasmacinal has finished a small Phase 2a study in COPD patients, the company has raised money twice more, and the larger trial needed to show fewer exacerbations is still being prepared.

Where EpiEndo Stands Now

EpiEndo is active. The Icelandic company register at Skatturinn lists it as a public limited company (hf.) at Kristínargata 1 in Reykjavík, with annual accounts on file for every year from 2014 to 2025. The EC list and CORDIS still use the older form "ehf", a private limited company; when the company converted is not shown in the free register extract. The filed accounts themselves are sold, not published, so revenue, losses and equity could not be verified for this article.

The company keeps publishing. On 5 October 2026 it announced a paper in ERJ Open Research on antiviral responses in airway cells from asthma patients, following papers in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Lung in March 2026, according to its news page. In January 2026 it raised €9 million in convertible bonds, of which €5 million was new money and €4 million an extension of older convertibles, to pay for chemistry, manufacturing and controls work before a Phase 2b trial, according to its announcement and its adviser Fossar, which named three Icelandic pension funds among the buyers: Birta, the Pension Fund for State Employees and the Vestmannaeyjar Pension Fund. The two sources disagree on the date of the older bond: EpiEndo says it was issued in 2023, Fossar says "two years ago", which points to early 2024.

The Technology: Azithromycin Without the Antibiotic

Long-term azithromycin reduces COPD flare-ups, an effect that goes beyond killing bacteria, but taking an antibiotic for years drives macrolide resistance, as EpiEndo described in its Series A announcement. The company's compounds, which it calls Barriolides, are macrolides redesigned to keep the effects on the airway lining and on inflammation while removing antibacterial activity. Its scientific roots are in more than a decade of research at the University of Iceland, the company says. In December 2024 the World Health Organization gave EP395 the generic name glasmacinal, using a new suffix, "-macinal", defined as a non-antibacterial macrolide with anti-inflammatory activity, according to the company's announcement and its product page.

Standard COPD treatment relies on inhaled bronchodilators and inhaled corticosteroids, which ease symptoms; CORDIS records the company's claim that these "fail to slow down the progression of the disease". Glasmacinal would be a once-daily pill added on top. The pitch has narrowed over time: in its EIC application EpiEndo described a drug that alters epithelial stem cell differentiation and is "poised to provide 50% reduction of COPD hospitalisations", according to CORDIS. Today the company describes an oral drug that "enhances the host defense response to inhaled pathogens and is anti-inflammatory", and says trials to show fewer exacerbations "are being planned". No trial has yet tested whether it cuts hospitalisations.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

BRONCHOTHELIN ran from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2021. CORDIS says the project would move EP395 "from pre-clinical stage through phase 1a, first-in-human, clinical trials", with the trial to start in the third quarter of 2020. The grant agreement was signed on 6 May 2020. It was EpiEndo's second EU grant: in 2017 it received €50,000 from the SME Instrument Phase 1 for a feasibility study called Bronchomycn, according to CORDIS, which then expected the drug to be ready for sale in 2021.

The final CORDIS report says the UK regulator MHRA approved the clinical trial application in December 2020, that the first-in-human trial began in the first quarter of 2021 and ended "at the start of January 2022", and that EP395 was dosed up to 750 mg once and 375 mg daily for 28 days "without any side effects and adverse events". The public trial record gives slightly different dates: ClinicalTrials.gov lists a start on 5 April 2021, completion on 22 March 2022 and 78 participants, and EpiEndo announced completion on 18 May 2022. The trial thus started about eight months later than planned and finished after the project ended. The peer-reviewed write-up in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (March 2026) is more careful than the CORDIS report: it says no serious or severe adverse events occurred and no drug-related adverse events led to withdrawal, not that there were no side effects.

The application also set out the commercial plan, according to CORDIS: after a Phase 2 trial, a licensing deal with a pharma company in 2023, worth an estimated €150 to €230 million in upfront and milestone payments plus 8% royalties, and "blockbuster potential" of more than €4.9 billion in EU and US sales five years after a 2027 launch. No licence has been announced. When it reported Phase 2a results in April 2024, the company said it was "exploring our partnering options", according to its release, and its 2026 bond was raised to keep developing the drug itself.

1. MHRA approval of the first-in-human trialDeliveredDecember 2020, per CORDIS.
2. GMP batch of EP395 for the trialDeliveredMilestone 1 "on time", company report on CORDIS.
3. Phase 1a trial within the projectLateStarted April 2021, not Q3 2020; completed early 2022, after the project end.
4. Licensing deal with a pharma company, 2023Not achievedNo deal announced by October 2026.
5. 50% fewer COPD hospitalisationsUntestedNo trial has measured exacerbations or hospitalisations.

What Came After the Grant

The equity half of the blended award arrived as debt first. In November 2019 EpiEndo said it was one of 39 companies going into discussions with the EIC for a direct equity investment of €2.7 million, according to its announcement and Northstack. In April 2021 it signed a €2.7 million convertible loan agreement with the EIC Fund, with the CEO describing the Fund as "a lender, and potentially investor", according to the company's release. In August 2021 the EIC Fund joined a €20 million Series A led by Flerie Invest and Iðunn Venture Fund, with ABC Ventures, which the CEO called the Fund's "first follow-on investment", according to the Series A announcement and tech.eu. The EIC Fund lists EpiEndo in its portfolio of invested companies, and the company names the Fund among its major shareholders. The Fund's stake and the terms of the conversion are not public. The company's own 10-year review describes the EIC money of November 2019 as "2.5MEUR grant and 2.7MEUR equity", which simplifies a loan that was signed 17 months later.

The Series A paid for growth. In April 2022 EpiEndo opened a chemistry laboratory in Solna, Sweden, and said its team had grown from 9 permanent employees at the time of the Series A to 19, according to its announcement; by January 2024 it counted 31 people, according to its 10-year review. No independent headcount is available, and the current size of the team is not public.

Four more trials followed the EIC-funded one, all registered on ClinicalTrials.gov with EpiEndo as sponsor. An inhaled endotoxin (LPS) challenge study in 49 healthy volunteers in Hannover missed its primary endpoint, a statistically significant effect on the inflammatory marker IL-8, while other markers moved in the drug's favour, the company reported in October 2023. A second LPS study at lower doses, with 40 participants, ran from February to August 2025, according to ClinicalTrials.gov and the company's start announcement; its results had not been announced by October 2026. A drug interaction study in Sweden with 37 participants, which the company calls its IND-opening trial for the US, ended in January 2024.

The one patient study is the Phase 2a. It randomised 61 people with stable COPD (42 on EP395, 19 on placebo) for 12 weeks at six clinics in the UK and Germany. Adverse events were about as common on the drug as on placebo (64.3% against 63.2%), four patients were withdrawn because of adverse events (three on EP395), and neutrophil elastase in sputum fell more on EP395 than on placebo (p=0.030), while the fall in myeloperoxidase was not statistically significant (p=0.119), according to the paper in ERJ Open Research. Sputum sequencing found no detectable effect on the lung microbiome. Co-author Henrik Watz said the drug "reduced neutrophilic inflammation in COPD patients without any detectable impact on the lung microbiome", according to Velocity Clinical Research. Safety and biomarkers were what the trial was designed to measure; it was not built to show fewer flare-ups.

On resistance, a separate analysis of stool samples from the drug interaction study, published in Nature Communications in August 2026, found that two weeks of glasmacinal produced "modest" changes in gut bacteria, including fewer Enterobacteriaceae, but no selection of azithromycin resistance. Side projects exist too: a Eurostars project with the Swiss organ-on-chip company AlveoliX on ulcerative colitis, supported with about €1.4 million in public money across the partners, according to EpiEndo's update, and a 2026 Biomedicines paper on the same disease. CORDIS lists no Horizon project of the company other than BRONCHOTHELIN and Bronchomycn.

Why Europe Should Care

Antimicrobial resistance causes more than 35,000 deaths a year in the EU and EEA, and the EU has run a One Health Action Plan against it since June 2017, extended by a Council Recommendation in June 2023, according to the European Commission. A drug that gives COPD patients the anti-inflammatory benefit of long-term macrolides without the antibiotic pressure fits that policy directly. EpiEndo is based outside the EU, in Iceland, but its clinical work has been done largely in the UK, Germany and Sweden.

The Verdict

EpiEndo and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.