How MultiplexDX Spent Its EIC Accelerator Grant on Breast Cancer

Most breast cancers are classified with two kinds of test: a pathologist stains a tissue slice and judges a handful of markers by eye, or a lab grinds up the tumour and measures the activity of dozens of genes. The first keeps the picture but gives little data; the second gives data but loses the picture. MultiplexDX, a Bratislava biotech founded by the chemist Pavol Čekan after four years at the US National Cancer Institute, according to its company page, built a test that does both on the same slice. It calls the test Multiplex8+.

In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2019 cut-off the European Commission selected MultiplexDX, s.r.o., then registered in Prešov, for a grant-only award; it is the only Slovak row on that list, so no partner company shared the project. The grant was €2,449,527.50 towards a €3,499,325 project, according to CORDIS. The company announced that it was the first Slovak company to win the EIC Accelerator and that the test "could enter the clinical practice as early as 2023". Seven years later the method is validated and published, the test is offered from the company's own laboratory, and the commercial business it was meant to create is not yet visible in the accounts.

Where MultiplexDX Stands Now

MultiplexDX is active. The Slovak Business Register was updated on 7 October 2026; in August 2026 it added the operation of a health facility in medical genetics to the company's registered activities. North Data also lists the company as active at the same Bratislava address. It filed its 2025 accounts with the Register of Financial Statements, and in 2025 and 2026 it exhibited at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and at ASCO 2026 in Chicago, where Čekan, Evan Paul and Rolando Brawer met clinicians and "strategic partners".

The breast cancer test is on sale in a limited form. The company's product page invites orders and declares that "the Multiplex8+ test is only manufactured and used in MultiplexDX, s.r.o." and meets the general safety and performance requirements of the EU's in vitro diagnostics regulation (EU 2017/746). The company's own scientists describe it as a "lab developed diagnostic test" in the competing interests statement of their 2025 paper. No ISO 15189 accreditation for that laboratory has been announced; the company announced ISO 9001:2015, a general quality management certificate, in November 2024.

The Technology: Looking Before Sequencing

The method, published as mFISHseq, starts with RNA fluorescent in situ hybridisation (RNA-FISH): glowing probes light up the messenger RNA of four standard breast cancer markers (the oestrogen and progesterone receptors, HER2 and Ki67) in a tissue section. Guided by that image, a laser cuts out the tumour regions, and only those cells go on to whole-transcriptome RNA sequencing. The aim is to stop healthy tissue from diluting the tumour's signal and to show when one tumour contains areas of different subtypes, according to the study in Nature Communications (2025, volume 16, article 226).

The established alternatives do one half each. Immunohistochemistry, the routine stain, gives "largely qualitative" information on few markers, while multigene assays "lack insights into cellular morphology", as the project's CORDIS report puts it. MultiplexDX's report adds prognostic and predictive gene signatures, including markers relevant to antibody-drug conjugates, a fast-growing class of breast cancer drugs, according to its product page and the paper.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Multiplex8+ ran from 1 May 2020 to 28 February 2023. The CORDIS objective set two goals: an ISO 15189-accredited laboratory selling the test to cancer centres and patients, and "a clinical validation on 4 000 tissue samples". It also projected accumulated revenues of €305.3 million in the first five years. The company said the samples would come from Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic and Iceland.

The project stalled early. In December 2021, 19 months after the official start, the company wrote that it had "officially resumed" the project "after a seven-month hiatus precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic", receiving its first 300 specimens from PATH Biobank in Munich and hiring six scientists. In those months MultiplexDX was busy with COVID-19: it developed RT-PCR and LAMP tests and said it donated 250,000 tests to Slovakia, according to Startitup.

The final report says the test was applied "to a cohort of 1080 FFPE breast tumors", which "demonstrated the analytical validity of Multiplex8+". The published paper gives 1,082 samples, and they came from Biobank Graz in Austria, PATH Biobank in Germany, a hospital in Malaga and two commercial suppliers, not from the four countries named in 2019. The report does not mention the accredited laboratory. On the last day of the project the company announced its "successful completion" and said it planned to commercialise Multiplex8+ "in the upcoming months". CORDIS also lists eight patent filings from the project, all titled "Method for diagnosing diseases using multiplex fluorescence and sequencing", in jurisdictions including China, Japan, Korea and the United States, according to the project results page.

1. Retrospective validation of the testDelivered1,080 to 1,082 tumours analysed; published in Nature Communications, which credits grant 946693.
2. Validation on 4,000 tissue samplesPartly deliveredAbout 27% of the promised number, per CORDIS.
3. ISO 15189-accredited laboratoryNot achievedNo accreditation announced; ISO 9001 in 2024 and a medical genetics facility licence in the register in 2026.
4. Test in clinical practice by 2023Partly deliveredIn-house test on order; 48 patients tested as research use only; a patient case described by the Košice oncology institute on the company's site.
5. €305.3M revenue in five yearsNot achievedSales of goods, products and services were €189,401 in 2024 and €241,769 in 2025.
6. Patent protectionDeliveredEight filings listed on CORDIS.

The grant paid for real science: a peer-reviewed validation in a major journal and a patent family. It did not deliver the two things CORDIS put first, an accredited laboratory and a validation on 4,000 samples, and it ended about 15 months after the announced restart. That makes it partly delivered.

What MultiplexDX Has Achieved Since the Award

The COVID-19 tests paid the bills. In 2021 sales of goods, products and services rose to €9,413,994 and the company made a net profit of €4,061,653, according to its accounts in the Register of Financial Statements; Startitup reported the same €9.414 million and €4.062 million in July 2022 and said the earnings went partly into the Multiplex8+ team. A SYMSITE report says the profit let the company "skip one investment round".

The clinical work since then has been about getting the test into hospitals. In May 2023 the company signed a memorandum with the East Slovak Oncology Institute in Košice, whose staff are thanked in the paper for following up patients in the research-use cohort. In a post dated September 2024 it announced a partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York for "further clinical validation" and use of the test "for selected patients"; MSKCC has not announced it, and no results are public. It also invested in StratifAI, a German start-up that predicts breast cancer outcomes from routine slide images; the amount is not public.

The Money

Until 2025 the breast cancer project was "primarily financed through revenues from PCR testing during the pandemic", the company says. The fundraising figures since then shift between sources. In June 2023 Startitup reported a €7 million investment to come; in November 2023 SYMSITE reported €7.5 million from Neulogy Ventures, Crowdberry and new investors. In March 2025 the company announced €8.12 million from Crowdberry, Neulogy Ventures, Venture to Future Fund and Lumus Investment, plus three Slovak Recovery Plan grants worth €5.6 million, €13.72 million in all, for clinical validation, AI diagnostics and a conference. One of those grants funds the "prospective clinical validation" of the test under the Slovak Recovery and Resilience Plan, according to the European Commission's project page, whose summary confusingly also refers to bladder cancer. The register shows the new shareholders arriving: CB MDX j. s. a. in January 2025, Venture to Future Fund and Slovak Venture Fund in January 2026, as recorded by the Business Register.

The accounts show what the test still costs. Net losses were €1,119,844 in 2022, €2,267,780 in 2023, €2,021,008 in 2024 and €2,056,480 in 2025. Equity fell to €986,019 at the end of 2023. At the end of 2024 the company held €8,046,450 in cash against liabilities of €7,520,257, up from €223,347 a year earlier; at the end of 2025 liabilities were €1,325,655 and equity was back at €4,631,739, according to the filings in the Register of Financial Statements. The short-form accounts do not break the liabilities down. Other operating income, which is not sales, reached €3,382,244 in 2025.

Why Europe Should Care

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, the CORDIS objective notes, and "diagnosis and treatment" is one of the action areas of Europe's Beating Cancer Plan, presented in February 2021 with ten flagship initiatives. Multiplex8+ is a European-developed test aimed squarely at that area, and its next validation step is paid for by the EU's recovery fund. MultiplexDX also takes part in a second EU project, ADDIT-CE, a Horizon Europe project on Alzheimer's diagnostics led from Brno that runs from January 2023 to December 2026, in which it is one of three biotech partners, with a net EU contribution of €716,202.50.

The record also shows the limits of a single grant. The EIC grant covered the retrospective first step; a prospective validation is now being paid for with Slovak recovery money, which is itself EU money from NextGenerationEU, as the company's 2025 posts acknowledge, and with private investors' money.

The Verdict

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