LenioBio, the EIC Accelerator and the Promise of Cell-Free Protein

Most protein drugs are made by living cells, such as Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, after what the PEPPER report calls "time-consuming and expensive cell line development and optimization cycles". LenioBio, a Düsseldorf company founded in 2016, sells a shortcut: ALiCE, an extract of tobacco cells that keeps the cell's protein-making machinery working after the cells themselves are gone, so a protein can be made from DNA in a day. In 2019 the European Commission chose its project PEPPER in the 5 June 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, and paid €2,373,875 of its €3,391,250 cost, according to CORDIS. The aim was to turn a laboratory kit into an industrial process that complied with GMP, the manufacturing standard for medicines.

The record is mixed. LenioBio announced in June 2022 that ALiCE ran in reactions of up to 10 litres, a real step for a cell-free system, but the company had told the press in 2019 that the grant would take it to 100 litres. GMP production, the other promise, was still described as a goal in 2024 and 2025. Meanwhile the company has raised private money, changed chief executive and moved its pitch from cheap bulk protein towards fast protein for vaccines and AI-designed antibodies.

Where LenioBio Stands in 2026

LenioBio is operating. In May 2026 it announced a collaboration with the US DNA maker Twist Bioscience to feed AI protein design with fast laboratory data, according to a release carried by Finanznachrichten and reported by AllSci. "AI can design new protein molecules for biologic drugs: the problem is that reality doesn't always reflect what the computer imagines," said chief executive André Goerke. In November 2025 it announced a similar partnership with mAIbe, an AI antibody design company, according to American Pharmaceutical Review and BioPharma APAC. Financial terms of neither deal were disclosed.

The commercial register shows a company that keeps raising capital. Its registered share capital rose to €1,559,179 in April 2026 with a new shareholder agreement, and the 2024 balance sheet was filed in June 2026, according to North Data. No insolvency or liquidation entry appears. The size and price of the 2024 and 2026 capital increases are not public, and neither are revenue or staff figures: the filed balance sheets sit behind paid access, so this article could not verify LenioBio's equity, losses or headcount.

The Technology: A Cell Without the Cell

Cell-free protein synthesis breaks cells open and uses their ribosomes and enzymes in a test tube. It is fast, because there is no cell line to build, and it can make proteins that would kill a living host. Bacterial extracts are cheap but cannot add the sugar chains and folding that many human proteins need; eukaryotic extracts can, but have produced little protein and rarely scaled beyond millilitres.

ALiCE, short for "Almost Living Cell-free Expression", is made from BY-2 tobacco cells, a fast-growing plant cell line. It was developed by Dow AgroSciences and Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Aachen; LenioBio took an exclusive licence from Dow in March 2018 and a second from Fraunhofer IME in August 2018, according to Fraunhofer IME. The CORDIS summary credits it with up to 3 mg of protein per millilitre, against 0.2 mg for other eukaryotic cell-free systems. LenioBio's own 2022 preprint reports the same 3 mg/mL and shows it making an antibody (adalimumab), a SARS-CoV-2 protein, a growth factor and a membrane receptor, with disulfide bonds and N-glycosylation. These are the company's own measurements; no independent benchmark against competing systems was found.

What PEPPER Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The Commission's list of the June 2019 Phase 2 winners names LenioBio GmbH, still under its old seat Bocholt, as the only company in PEPPER. CORDIS dates the grant agreement 19 November 2019 and the project 1 December 2019 to 28 February 2022. Its objective was to scale up "production capacity and yield to be able to produce proteins at an industrial scale using a semi-automated platform, while complying to GMP protocols and FDA/EMA regulations". When the grant was announced, chief executive Remberto Martis said the funding "will speed up the platform development to 100L scale", according to Healthcare Facilities Today.

The only report on CORDIS is thin. The periodic report, filed for the period to 28 February 2022, describes only the first months: new staff, subcontracts, lab space and equipment purchases, with a pilot line expected in "March/April 2021" despite COVID-19 delivery risks. It gives no final results. The outcome comes from the company: in June 2022 LenioBio announced that ALiCE could make "up to 3g/litre" of protein "in reaction volumes of up to 10 litres", calling scaling "one outcome" of PEPPER, according to PR Newswire and Kyodo News PR Wire. The same release named 100 litres as the next step. The company's preprint five months later documented a 1-litre bioreactor run, which it called the first eukaryotic cell-free reaction scaled several orders of magnitude past 10 mL.

1. Industrial-scale reactionsPartly10 litres announced in June 2022, against the 100 litres named in 2019; no 100-litre run announced since.
2. Yield of about 3 g per litre at scaleDeliveredStated in the June 2022 release and the 2022 preprint; company data only.
3. GMP-compliant productionNot achievedIn 2024 a scaled process was "a critical first step in a roadmap toward GMP"; GMP-grade lysate is a goal of the 2025 to 2027 EU4Health project.
4. Final project reportingThinCORDIS shows no final results, deliverables or publications.

The project ran to its planned end date. A tenfold jump to 10 litres is a credible engineering result for a eukaryotic extract, and the yield claim held at that size. But the two headline promises, 100 litres and GMP, were not met within the grant, and GMP is still being worked on with further public money.

What LenioBio Has Done Since the Award

The private money came during the project. In November 2021 LenioBio closed a Series A extension of €11.5 million led by its existing investor Bridford Group, and added Thomas Harding, Leopoldo Zambeletti and Karen Fallen to its board, according to Bionity and a Life Sciences Europe profile. The size of the original Series A is not public. In May 2023 founder Remberto Martis handed the chief executive post to André Goerke, who had set up Lonza's mRNA business unit, from 1 June 2023, according to Pharma Focus Europe and Bionity.

Under Goerke the story moved to speed. In February 2024 the vaccine coalition CEPI committed up to US$2 million to test whether ALiCE can make vaccine proteins for clinical trials in 20 to 40 days, in support of its 100 Days Mission, according to CEPI. In July 2024 Touchlight agreed to supply enzymatically made DNA for that work, according to Outsourced Pharma, and in October 2024 LenioBio began transferring a 10-litre process to the contract manufacturer ReciBioPharm in Oeiras, Portugal, after reporting that it met all milestones of the project's first six months, according to Recipharm. Kits went on sale in North America through the Labscoop marketplace in 2024, according to PharmTech.

The alternative-protein plan in the PEPPER report, growth factors for cultivated meat, produced a €100,000 prize from GFI and EIT Food in November 2022 for work with Kerry Group, according to Vegconomist. No product from it has been announced. LenioBio is also a non-funded partner in three Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral networks, among them SYNSENSO, and the German federal funding catalogue lists grants of €182,494 (2020) and €394,137 (2021, HiTGlyP) to the company, according to North Data.

The Money

The largest new grant is from EU4Health. LenioBio's project "Innovative protein medicine biomanufacturing with Continuous-Modular ALiCE" receives €3.7 million from 1 July 2025 to late 2027 through HaDEA, on behalf of the Commission's health emergency authority HERA, to scale lysate production, add functions for vaccines and multispecific antibodies, and prepare GMP-grade lysate production, according to BeBeez and Startuprise. BeBeez adds that the project received the Commission's STEP Seal. North Data's summary of the EU Financial Transparency System counts four EU fundings to LenioBio in 2025 totalling €5,879,049, one of them under a European Defence Fund call; the defence project and LenioBio's share in it could not be identified.

LenioBio is not in the EIC Fund portfolio: none of the 315 organisations on its 16 pages is LenioBio, which fits a 2019 award that was grant only.

Why Europe Should Care

Europe's pandemic planning depends on making medical countermeasures quickly, and HERA's funding of LenioBio is a direct bet that a cell-free system can cut weeks from that. The Commission's July 2025 strategy for European life sciences also names more efficient biomanufacturing among its targets, as the Austrian research portal ERA Portal Austria summarised. A European-owned platform that can make complex proteins without a cell line fits both. Its value as strategic capacity, though, rests on the GMP step: material that cannot go into patients cannot supply a pandemic response.

The Verdict

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