NanoVation's EIC Accelerator Project: COPD Monitor Against Wind-Up

NanoVation-GS, a 2014 spin-off of the Technion in Haifa, set out to do for the lungs what an ECG does for the heart: a small wearable with nanomaterial sensors that reads lung function from a patient's ordinary breathing, so that people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) could be checked at home every day. The European Commission selected the project, SenseGuard, in the October 2019 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot with blended finance, listing the company at Ramat Yishai near Haifa as the only beneficiary of the project. CORDIS records an EU grant of €2,497,029.50 towards a €3,567,185 project that ran from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2023, under the same Ramat Yishai address. In July 2021 the EIC Fund added €5 million of equity, according to Calcalist and NoCamels, which made NanoVation the first Israeli company with both a grant and equity from the EIC.

Five years later the company is gone. The Israeli company register, in its open data release of 8 October 2026, lists NanoVation G.S. Ltd (company number 515053213) with the status "liquidation by the court", and Startupim records that it "ceased to operate" in November 2025.

Where NanoVation-GS Stands Now

The register entry is the hardest evidence: status "חיסול ע"י בימ"ש", liquidation by the court, with the last annual report filed for 2023. A court has ordered the insolvent company liquidated. The date of the court order could not be verified: it is not in the open register data, and no court decision or press report naming the company was found. OpenCorporates still shows the company as active, which conflicts with the government's open data, updated on 8 October 2026.

The company's own channels went dark at the same time. Its website, last captured with content by the Internet Archive in July 2025, now returns an error page from its web host, and the archive has recorded only "not found" responses since June 2026. No announcement of the closure, a sale of the technology or a successor company was found.

The Technology: Lung Function From Normal Breathing

The standard lung test, spirometry, asks the patient to inhale fully and blow out as hard as possible into a mouthpiece, usually in a clinic. Many COPD patients find that exhausting, and it is not done daily at home. NanoVation's argument was that the subtle changes before a flare-up, called an exacerbation, show up in ordinary tidal breathing if it is measured precisely enough. Its SenseGuard sensor, worn near the nose and mouth, used nanomaterial-based sensors from Hossam Haick's Technion group to record each breath. The company website listed respiration rate, the ratio of inhalation to exhalation, duty cycle, the variability of these parameters and "novel and proprietary" respiratory parameters, from measurements of 2 to 3 minutes a day.

The sensor work came out of a larger EU project. NanoVation was a partner in SNIFFPHONE, a Technion-led Horizon 2020 consortium from February 2015 to February 2019 that built a phone-attached breath analyser for disease screening, with a net EU contribution of €407,393.75 to NanoVation. The Technion says NanoVation developed the "nanosensors for defining the breathing protocol" and that the project won the European Commission's 2018 award for the most innovative project.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

SenseGuard came to the EIC Accelerator in two steps. A €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 grant paid for a feasibility study from May to September 2019, whose report lists a product development plan covering finalisation, industrialisation, validation and a CE mark application. The Phase 1 summary says the company had already raised and invested more than €2.5 million in SenseGuard and needed €2.2 million more. The main award followed: in the October 2019 round the EIC selected it for blended finance, and the grant agreement was signed on 26 March 2020.

The objective on CORDIS was to "finalise the development of the SenseGuard device and validate its efficacy and safety in dedicated clinical studies"; the final periodic report, covering April 2021 to March 2023, sets the goal as "to market a clinically validated SenseGuard". By the end of the project the report says NanoVation had finalised a new generation of the device, developed its hardware and software and raised production to its daily target, but had only "commenced the validation activities (including patient recruitment for the clinical trials)", which it would continue "in the upcoming months". No deliverables, publications or results are listed.

1. Finalise the SenseGuard deviceDeliveredNew generation design, hardware and software finished, per the CORDIS report.
2. Production capacityDeliveredDaily production target met, per the company's own report; not independently confirmed.
3. Clinical validation of efficacy and safetyLate, unreportedOnly started by March 2023; the main trial ended in February 2024 with no results posted.
4. Market a clinically validated SenseGuardNot achievedNo launch, customer or sales announced before operations ceased in November 2025.
5. CE mark updated to the EU MDRUnverifiedPlanned in 2022, per Technion UK; no completion found.

The Trials That Never Reported

ClinicalTrials.gov lists four studies sponsored by NanoVation, all marked completed. The largest, a home monitoring study of patients at high risk of COPD exacerbations at six Israeli hospitals including Rambam, Barzilai and Tel Aviv Medical Center, enrolled 57 patients from November 2021 to February 2024, eleven months after the EIC project ended. A feasibility study in exacerbating patients at the University Hospital Halle in Germany and the Galilee Medical Center enrolled 15 patients from August 2020 to May 2023, and an airway challenge study at the Nicosia Lung Center in Cyprus enrolled 37 from November 2021 to June 2023. An earlier accuracy study of respiration rate with 25 patients ran in 2019, before the award.

None of the four records has results posted, and no peer-reviewed paper reporting the SenseGuard trials was found. The company says earlier trials showed its respiratory rate measurement to be as accurate as the gold standard, according to its profile on Startupim, but the data behind that claim is not public. For a device whose selling point was early warning of exacerbations, the home monitoring study was the one that mattered, and its outcome is unknown.

The Money

Before the EIC award NanoVation had raised $6 million in two rounds with Israel Innovation Authority support, Calcalist reported in July 2020. The €5 million EIC Fund investment followed in July 2021; CEO Gregory Shuster said then that the company was "considering increasing the latest funding round", and the Israeli site Walla put the team at 20 people. Alien Technology Transfer, the consultancy that advised the company on the application, called it the first Israeli SME to secure EIC blended finance.

No larger round was ever announced. Instead NanoVation turned to retail investors: a convertible note on the Israeli crowd investment platform ExitValley reached 109% of its target, with a minimum ticket of €30,000. Startupim dates that round to January 2023, does not give the amount, and puts total funding at $8,755,000, a figure that is not broken down and could not be checked against other sources.

NanoVation does not appear on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages in October 2026, although the 2021 reports describe the €5 million as an EIC Fund investment. Whether the equity was paid in full, in tranches or not at all, and what the EIC Fund has recovered, is not public. As an Israeli private company, NanoVation did not publish its accounts, so revenue, losses and the cash position before the liquidation are unknown.

Why Europe Should Care

Chronic respiratory diseases are one of five strands of the Commission's Healthier Together initiative on non-communicable diseases for 2022 to 2027, which names early detection and better disease management among its aims. A cheap home monitor that warns of COPD flare-ups before patients need hospital care fits that agenda, and NanoVation's own website put EU spending on COPD exacerbations at more than €15 billion a year, a figure it did not source.

The case also shows the limits of a grant that ends before validation does. The EIC paid for a device and a production line, but the evidence that would have convinced hospitals and insurers, the trial results, was not ready when the project closed and was never published.

The Verdict

NanoVation-GS, its former managers and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.