MyBiotics and the EIC Accelerator: Gut Probiotics, Then Silence

Most probiotics on pharmacy shelves contain a handful of bacterial strains that are easy to grow in a factory, not the fussy, oxygen-shy species that dominate a healthy human gut. MyBiotics Pharma, an Israeli microbiome company founded in 2014, says it can grow those harder species on tiny particles, dry them into a powder and put them in a capsule, so that more of them survive stomach acid and settle in the intestine. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2019 cut-off, the European Commission selected its project MBSelect for blended finance, the only beneficiary listed for that project.

The grant agreement, signed on 6 May 2020, gave MyBiotics an EU contribution of €1,995,700 towards a total cost of €2,875,932, according to CORDIS. The company announced the award as "2.0 million Euros ($2.3 million)" in a press release on 21 October 2020, which NutraIngredients reported. The project closed on 30 November 2022 with a report that says it "successfully achieved its goals". What came next is much harder to find.

A Registered Company With a Quiet Public Record

On paper, MyBiotics is alive. The Israeli Corporations Authority's register, published as open data, lists MYBIOTICS PHARMA LTD as active, with no violation flag and an annual report filed for 2025, at 12 Abba Eban Boulevard in Herzliya. The same address appears on the company's contact page. OpenCorporates still shows an older registered address in Rehovot and a mailing address in Ness Ziona, where CORDIS placed the company in 2020; the startup database Startupim gives Herzliya as headquarters and a headcount of 12 in September 2026.

The company is also still paying to protect its technology. A patent family on "growing bacteria on particles", filed with priority from April 2022, entered the European, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and US systems; the US application was published in August 2025, and the Japanese file records a request for examination and an amendment on 3 April 2026, according to Google Patents.

Almost everything else has stopped. The company website carries a 2020 copyright notice and its news section ends with a Phase 1 result in January 2022. The address the EC list gives for the company, www.mybiotix.com, now redirects to a parked page offering the domain for sale through GoDaddy. No funding round, product launch, trial start or partnership has been announced since an investment by the Japanese biotech AnGes in November 2022.

The Technology: Bacteria Grown as Biofilms on Particles

Conventional probiotics are grown as free-floating cultures in a fermenter. MyBiotics' MyCrobe method grows bacteria attached to micro-particles, a biofilm-like state that the company says makes them tougher. In a 2018 interview with Globes, Daboush said bacteria treated this way survived in the gut of mice "for almost two weeks, compared with just a day or two with existing methods". These were the company's own animal results; no independent replication has been published.

MBSelect was meant to take that method from single strains to designed communities. The CORDIS objective describes growing "multi-strain communities of human bacteria" in pre-selected clusters, so that probiotics could be tailored to purpose, age, gender or ethnicity without relying on a donor's stool sample. A second tool, the MyLiveIn screening system, grows human gut microbiomes in the lab for several days to test which prebiotic fibres feed the wanted bacteria. The project combined both into "synbiotics", bacteria plus the fibres that support them, for three groups: children, adults and the elderly.

The same platform feeds a drug pipeline. MBX-SD-202, built with the company's SuperDonor whole-microbiome culturing technology, is a capsule meant to replace faecal microbiota transplants for recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection. MyBiotics announced on 24 January 2022 that a Phase 1 trial in healthy volunteers, in three dose groups, reported no serious adverse events, a result also carried by BioSpace. The company said it would continue clinical development "during 2022 and 2023". A search of ClinicalTrials.gov finds no registered MyBiotics trial of MBX-SD-202, and no Phase 2 start has been announced.

What MBSelect Promised, and What the Record Shows

The CORDIS objective set out a concrete plan: complete the MBSelect technology, "develop its first three probiotic products, scale them to industrial level, test them, and produce the 1st batch for initial commercial market testing immediately following the project; followed by full EU & US commercialization and scaling."

The final periodic report, covering 1 June 2021 to 30 November 2022, says MyBiotics tested dozens of strains grown with MyCrobe against acid, heat and antibiotics, found its dried powder stable for 18 months at 4°C and 25°C, saw "enhance[d] attachment" in colonisation tests compared with standard fermentation, and tested scale-up "in several scales" with food-approved ingredients. Prebiotic screening was done for the three age groups, but the report says the premix "will be made", in the future tense. Its summary is that the technology is "ready for production in small industrial scale". The company's Results in Brief adds that it was "working with a few global business partners to commercialise their first range of products". None of those partners or products has been named since.

1. Complete the MBSelect culturing technologyDeliveredGrowth and powder formulation optimised, per the CORDIS report; a particle-culture patent family followed.
2. Three probiotic products for children, adults and the elderlyPartlyPrebiotics screened per age group; the premix was still to be made at project end.
3. Scale to industrial levelPartly"Ready for production in small industrial scale", by the company's own account.
4. First batch for commercial market testing after the projectNot achievedNo batch, test market or product announced by the company or a third party.
5. EU and US commercialisationNot achievedNo product on sale under the MyBiotics name or a named partner's.

The project also ran late. When the grant was announced, NutraIngredients reported that it had "an end date of May 31, 2022 scheduled in". CORDIS records the end as 30 November 2022, six months later. Neither source explains the change.

The Blended Finance That Left No Trace

The Commission's October 2019 list marks MBSelect as "Blended", meaning a grant plus an equity investment from the EIC. CORDIS records only the €1,995,700 grant, under the SME instrument phase 2 funding scheme. MyBiotics does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages for this article, and neither the company nor the EIC has announced an equity investment. Whether the equity part was declined, withdrawn or never negotiated is not public.

MyBiotics' known private money is modest. It announced an investment of undisclosed size from Mii Fund, a partnership with the Japanese dermatology company Maruho, on 3 February 2021. On 28 November 2022 AnGes, listed in Tokyo, disclosed that it had paid $500,000 for a MyBiotics convertible bond, to fund preparation of a US Phase 2a trial of MBX-SD-202. That trial has not been announced. Total funding cannot be pinned down: Startupim states $13,479,356, while CB Insights shows $2.3 million. Israeli private companies do not file public accounts, so revenue, losses and cash are unknown.

Partnerships That Went Quiet

Before and during the EIC project, MyBiotics signed with credible partners. Ferring took a first option on its technology in 2017 and a second, for women's health, in 2018, according to Globes and NutraIngredients. On 17 February 2021 Ferring, its subsidiary Rebiotix and MyBiotics announced a "multi-year strategic collaboration" on live bacterial treatments for bacterial vaginosis, also reported by FemTech Insider. In November 2020 Galmed, then developing Aramchol for fatty liver disease, agreed to work with MyBiotics on a microbiome signature for its drug, and in April 2021 Hadassah's technology transfer arm signed a collaboration on microbiome-based support for cancer immunotherapy, according to the company. No results, milestones or terminations from any of the three have been published.

Earlier EU Money

MBSelect was MyBiotics' second Horizon 2020 grant. CORDIS lists AB-Prevention, an SME Instrument phase 1 feasibility study for a probiotic supplement against antibiotic-associated disorders, with an EU contribution of €50,000 towards €71,429, from 1 March to 31 May 2016. The MBSelect objective dates that feasibility study to 2015, a year earlier than CORDIS.

Why Europe Should Care

Microbiome medicine is about to become more regulated in Europe. The EU's regulation on substances of human origin, Regulation (EU) 2024/1938, came into force in August 2024, becomes fully applicable in August 2027 and brings faecal microbiota transplantation within its scope, according to Gut Microbiota for Health. Cultured, standardised products of the kind MyBiotics proposes would avoid relying on individual stool donors. The Commission's Strategy for European Life Sciences, adopted on 2 July 2025, aims to speed the path from research to market, which is exactly where MBSelect stalled.

The Verdict

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