Nanosynex Since the EIC Accelerator: Antibiotic Test Slips to 2027

When a patient has a bacterial infection, the laboratory test that tells a doctor which antibiotic will actually work usually takes days. In the meantime doctors prescribe on an educated guess, which feeds antimicrobial resistance. Nanosynex, an Israeli start-up built on research at the Technion, set out to cut that test to a few hours. The European Innovation Council selected it twice, in June 2019 and March 2020, and signed a grant of €2,562,875 for a project that ran from October 2020 to September 2025, according to CORDIS. The project was to industrialise the test, run clinical trials and obtain the CE mark for sale in the EU. No CE mark has been announced. In January 2025 the company's largest shareholder said NanoSynex now plans to be approved for the EU market in 2027, according to a Qualigen Therapeutics press release filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Where Nanosynex Stands Now

Nanosynex is a registered, active private company. The Israeli company register lists it as active, records 2023 as the last year for which it filed an annual report, and marks it as a "violating company" (מפרה), according to the register's open data on data.gov.il; OpenCorporates shows the same number, status and Tel Aviv address. Its website is online but carries no news after a letter to shareholders dated 5 January 2023.

The last dated public statement about the company is from 28 January 2025, when Qualigen said it would be the first investor in a 2025 bridge round in which NanoSynex would raise up to $500,000, as reported in the SEC filing and by TipRanks. Whether the round closed, and for how much, is not public. The startup database Startupim lists a grant in June 2025 from Synergy7, a Be'er Sheva accelerator, and the Israel Innovation Authority, and 7 employees; no second source confirms either figure. Qualigen, renamed AIxCrypto Holdings after a crypto treasury pivot, still describes its NanoSynex holding as an equity-method investment in its 2025 annual report and its August 2026 quarterly report, but gives no update on the company's progress. With no confirmed activity in the last 12 months, the company's operating status cannot be confirmed.

The Technology: Hundreds of Tiny Droplets Instead of One Tube

An antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) grows the bacteria from a patient's sample in the presence of different antibiotics at different concentrations and reads which ones stop the growth. Conventional methods are accurate but slow; the CORDIS summary says they take "a few days" to give a clinically usable answer. Nanosynex's method comes from the lab of Shulamit Levenberg at the Technion's biomedical engineering faculty. A 2017 paper in PNAS by Jonathan Avesar, Levenberg and colleagues described stationary nanoliter droplet arrays that delivered susceptibility results in about half the time of conventional methods, and the Technion says the work was transferred to Nanosynex.

The product has three parts, according to the project's CORDIS report: a disposable card of interconnected arrays with more than 50 nanowells each, loaded in one step; a benchtop reader that images the cards over time; and software that tracks bacterial growth by fluorescence and reports each antibiotic as susceptible, intermediate or resistant. The company claims results in about 4 hours on average and as little as 2 hours for some bacteria, starting with urinary tract infections. A planned second module would test urine directly, without first culturing the bacteria. The speed claims come from the company and the 2017 paper; no independent comparison with commercial systems has been published.

Two Selections, One Grant

The European Commission's list of EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 winners for the 5 June 2019 cut-off names NANOSYNEX LTD of Bnei Brak for the project Nanosynex. In November 2019 the company told Globes it had "received a $2.5 million grant from the European Union Horizon 2020 program", and that it hoped to run a clinical trial in 2021 and "reach the European market in 2022". Yet CORDIS holds no grant agreement from that round: a search of CORDIS for Nanosynex returns only a 2018 Phase 1 feasibility study (€50,000 EU contribution, June to November 2018) and grant 962124. The Commission's 2020 list notes that selection "does not constitute a formal commitment for funding". Why the June 2019 selection did not lead to a signed grant could not be verified.

The company was selected again, as a grant-only project, at the 20 March 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, according to the Commission's list of selected companies. Both lists name Nanosynex as the only beneficiary of its project. Grant 962124 was signed on 21 September 2020 for a project with the same title, total cost €3,661,250 and an EU contribution of €2,562,875, running from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2025, according to CORDIS. The company forecast positive cash flow by the end of 2026 on sales of more than €27.5 million.

The only published report on CORDIS is labelled "period 2" and covers 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2025, but its text describes the first year: an injection-moulded first card with 10 antibiotics at several concentrations "now in validation", a first reader for 6 cards, and software whose results matched the gold standard. A second-generation card "has been designed but not yet produced", and clinical sites were still being negotiated. CORDIS lists four patent applications as project results. The company's own letter of January 2023 adds a first clinical pilot at Laniado Hospital in Netanya: 100 strains, nine antibiotics and 605 bacteria and antibiotic combinations, with a categorical agreement the company says was above FDA and CE requirements. The letter set 2023 goals of a product for CE approval, ISO certification and final clinical studies for the CE mark. None of the three has been announced since.

1. First disposable card, reader and softwareDeliveredMVP system described in the CORDIS report.
2. Clinical testingPartlyOne 100-strain pilot, per the 2023 letter; no CE study reported.
3. Industrialised second-generation systemUnverifiedStill "generation 2.0" development in January 2025.
4. CE mark and EU salesNot achievedEU approval now planned for 2027.
5. June 2019 selectionNo grantNo grant agreement on CORDIS.

The Money: A Majority Investor Who Stepped Back

Before the EIC grant, the company named $1 million from Lamed Holdings and $500,000 from the Israel Innovation Authority, according to Globes. In May 2022 Qualigen Therapeutics, a Nasdaq-listed company from Carlsbad, California, bought a majority. It paid $600,000 for 381,786 new Series B preferred shares and took over the Series A-1 shares of Alpha Capital Anstalt in exchange for its own stock, ending with 52.8% of the voting equity, as reported by BioSpace and 360Dx. Qualigen also agreed to fund NanoSynex with up to about $10.4 million over three years, tied to milestones.

The pledge did not last. Qualigen funded about $2.4 million in 2022 and $0.5 million in February 2023, according to its annual report for 2023. On 20 July 2023, the day it sold its own diagnostics business to Chembio, a subsidiary of the French group Biosynex, it signed a settlement with NanoSynex: it gave up 281,000 Series B shares, cancelled about $3.0 million of promissory notes and was freed from further funding apart from two loans, according to its 8-K filing. In November 2023 it surrendered more shares instead of making those loans, cutting its stake to 39.90%. In the same report Qualigen lists among the risks of the holding NanoSynex's "history of operating losses" and "uncertainty as to the availability to NanoSynex of the cash resources it needs to execute its plans". Biosynex had been named as Nanosynex's European distribution partner in the 2018 Phase 1 project; whether that partnership still exists is not public.

Nanosynex does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages; both of its awards were grant only. Its own accounts are not published, so revenue, losses and cash could not be verified.

Why It Matters for Europe

Faster susceptibility testing serves a stated EU goal. The Council Recommendation on antimicrobial resistance adopted on 13 June 2023 sets five targets for 2030, including a 20% cut in total human antibiotic consumption, and calls for stronger antimicrobial stewardship, according to the European Commission and the ECDC. A test that tells doctors the right drug on the same day helps them stop guessing. The EIC funded an Israeli company to bring such a test to European laboratories first. Five years later, European laboratories still cannot buy it.

The Verdict

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