Lymphatica's Lymph Pump: What the EIC Accelerator Paid For

Lymphedema is swelling that does not go away. When lymph vessels or nodes are damaged, often by breast cancer surgery or radiotherapy, fluid collects under the skin of an arm or a leg, and patients manage it for life with compression sleeves, bandaging and manual drainage massage. Lymphatica Medtech, a 2017 spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), set out to replace the broken vessels with a machine: a pump and catheters implanted under the skin that move the fluid to a part of the body where it can drain normally.

In the April 2019 round of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot of what became the EIC Accelerator, the European Commission selected the company's LymphoDrain project, according to the official list of winners, which names Lymphatica Medtech SA as the only company on the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,810,725 towards a total cost of €2,586,750, from 1 September 2019 to 31 January 2023. Seven years after selection, the implant has been tested in nine published patients and has US breakthrough status, but it is not on sale anywhere, and the company has announced nothing since October 2024.

Where Lymphatica Stands Now

The company is registered and active in the Swiss commercial register, which shows no liquidation or insolvency. Its most recent register entries, from May and June 2025, record a board change and the move of its legal seat from Ecublens to Chavannes-près-Renens, according to Zefix. Its own news page ends with the Series B of 8 October 2024. The company's main domain, lymphatica.ch, forwards to a site still running on a "test" subdomain.

That Series B was large for a company of this size. Lymphatica raised €17.9 million in a round co-led by Panakès Partners, TechWald Next and CDP Venture Capital's Digital Transition Fund, with OCCIDENT, Zürcher Kantonalbank, Club degli Investitori and existing investor High-Tech Gründerfonds, according to HTGF and startupticker.ch. Both say the money is for clinical development and that the company opened an Italian subsidiary for research, manufacturing and clinical operations. The register entry of 18 October 2024 shows the capital increase and a new board: Dan Rose, a former executive of LimFlow and Medtronic, as chair, with Alessio Beverina of Panakès and Lukas Günther of TechWald. Günther left the board again in 2025 and was replaced by Luca Binda.

No news, trial registration or regulatory filing from the last twelve months could be found. Because the last public sign of activity is the June 2025 register entry, between 12 and 18 months ago, this article records the company's status as unknown rather than active.

The Technology: An Artificial Lymph Vessel

LymphoDrain has three parts, according to the company's technology page: a magnetic pump head and two catheters implanted under the skin, an external wearable controller that drives and powers the pump through the skin by a magnetic coupling, and a cloud application in which doctors set the flow rate and daily drainage time. The input catheter takes up fluid from the swollen arm or leg, and the output catheter releases it in an area with working lymph vessels, the supraclavicular region for the arm or the abdomen for the leg, according to the trial registration. The company says the implant needs no connection to any existing vessel and takes about 30 minutes to place.

That is the difference from the alternatives. Standard care, called complete decongestive therapy, combines compression and manual drainage and has to be kept up for life; microsurgery that connects lymph vessels to veins, or transplants of lymph nodes, is complex and suits only selected patients, as the CORDIS project report puts it. An active implant that pumps on a schedule is a new category. The trade-off is a permanent device under the skin and a controller worn on the body, and no long-term data on either have been published.

What the EU Grant Promised, and What the Record Shows

The EIC project had a narrow and checkable aim. Its overall objective was "to complete development and production of LymphoDrain for upper limb lymphedema, followed by design verification activities according to international directives and standards, and by initial clinical validation in a first-in-human clinical study", according to the final periodic report. It followed a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility grant from December 2017 to March 2018, which CORDIS lists under project 791055; at that stage the pump had been tested in large animals.

The report says the first device version was built and tested, ethics and Swissmedic approval were obtained, and the first-in-human study was carried out in the second reporting period, from May 2021 to January 2023, with "no safety concerns". The registry tells a slightly different story on timing. The LymphoPilot study at CHUV started on 8 September 2021 and ended on 30 September 2023, eight months after the EU project closed, and it is marked "terminated", with the reason "End of shelf life of investigational devices", according to ClinicalTrials.gov. It enrolled 12 people. In December 2022, the company said 6 patients had completed the study, according to its news page.

The results appeared in February 2025 in the European Journal of Internal Medicine. Nine patients with lymphedema of one arm after breast cancer had the device implanted for 8 weeks and stopped their usual compression and drainage treatment; the authors report no safety concerns and significant reductions in limb volume, according to the PubMed abstract. The lead author is CHUV angiology head Lucia Mazzolai; both founders and three other authors are Lymphatica employees, as the paper's conflict of interest statement discloses. The paper does not explain why 9 of the 12 enrolled people appear in it, and the registry entry has no posted results.

One further detail does not match. The CORDIS report says the company obtained an "ISO 14385" certified quality system; the company says it holds ISO 13485, the medical device standard, certified by TÜV SÜD and renewed in December 2022. The two standard numbers in the public record differ, and the company has not explained the CORDIS wording.

1. Develop and produce LymphoDrain for the armDeliveredDevice built and implanted, per CORDIS and the 2025 paper.
2. Design verification to standardsDeliveredSwissmedic and ethics approval for the study; ISO 13485 quality system renewed in 2022.
3. First-in-human studyDelivered9 patients implanted for 8 weeks, no safety concerns reported; results published in 2025.
4. Finish within the projectLateStudy ran to September 2023, after the January 2023 project end, and was stopped at device shelf life.
5. CE marking (a project keyword)Not yetNot part of the stated objective; the device is still for investigational use only.

What Came After the Grant

The EU grant was followed by a run of financing. A Series A closed in November 2020, according to the CORDIS report; HTGF announced it on 3 December 2020 as a seven-figure round it led, with business angels, EIT Health and existing investor LIVEventures, and the register records a capital increase decided on 16 November 2020. In April 2023 the Swiss innovation agency Innosuisse picked Lymphatica as one of 53 companies in its Swiss Accelerator, the national stand-in for the EIC Accelerator while Switzerland was not associated with Horizon Europe, with up to CHF 2.5 million per project, according to startupticker.ch; the company says its grant was CHF 2.5 million for LyBRA, a version of the implant for leg lymphedema. In June 2023 it received a CHF 400,000 loan from the Vaud innovation programme FIT, according to its news page.

The regulatory step came next. The US Food and Drug Administration granted LymphoDrain Breakthrough Device Designation, which gives a product faster interaction with the agency but is not an approval. The company dates the award 31 January 2024 on its news page; startupticker.ch reported it on 12 February 2024.

Revenue, losses and cash cannot be checked. Swiss companies of this kind do not publish their accounts, and the register shows only that the company appointed an auditor, Fiduconsult Lausanne, in 2021. Its share capital rose from CHF 100,000 at founding to EUR 362,269 after the Series B, when it was converted into euros, according to Zefix. Lymphatica does not appear on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which is consistent with its grant-only award. CORDIS lists no other EU project for the company, which as a Swiss firm had no access to Horizon Europe's EIC Accelerator from 2021.

Why It Matters for Europe

Lymphedema is above all a disease of cancer survivors. The EU's Europe's Beating Cancer Plan makes quality of life after cancer one of its four pillars, and the CORDIS objective puts the European cost of lymphedema at around €832 million a year in health and social bills, plus €2.3 billion for related infections and €4.4 billion in lost earnings; those figures are the company's and were not checked independently. A European device that turns daily self-treatment into a scheduled implant would sit in that policy space. The financing tells a cross-border story too: the company is Swiss, the EU paid for its first clinical device, and all three lead investors of its Series B are Italian, including the state-backed CDP Venture Capital, with manufacturing and clinical operations partly moving to an Italian subsidiary.

The Verdict

Lymphatica Medtech was not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.