Omnix Took EIC Accelerator Money for Antibiotics, Then Raised $25M

Acinetobacter baumannii is a hospital bacterium that infects ventilated patients and shrugs off most antibiotics, including the carbapenems kept in reserve for the worst cases. In May 2024 the World Health Organization put carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii first on the critical tier of its bacterial priority pathogens list, a ranking also reported by Contagion Live. Omnix Medical, a Jerusalem company founded in 2015, is developing OMN6, an engineered peptide modelled on the defence molecules of insects, to treat exactly these infections.

The European Commission selected Omnix in the EIC Accelerator pilot's 7 October 2020 cut-off with blended finance, a grant plus EIC equity, according to its list of selected companies, where Omnix is the only beneficiary named for the OMN6 project. The grant part was €2,389,674.70 towards a €3,413,821 project that ran from 1 July 2021 to 31 October 2023, according to CORDIS. Omnix itself announced the award as "€10.8M in EIC Accelerator funding" in a January 2021 release, a figure European Biotechnology repeated. Neither says how much of it was equity.

Where Omnix Medical Stands Now

Omnix is active and in the middle of its first trial in patients. The Israeli Corporations Authority lists Omnix Medical Ltd as an active private company incorporated on 31 March 2015, with its last annual report filed for 2026, according to the authority's open company data; OpenCorporates shows the same status and Jerusalem address. Israeli private companies do not publish accounts, so revenue, losses and headcount cannot be checked.

The Phase IIa trial, registered as NCT06087536, is a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of OMN6 in hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated pneumonia caused by the A. baumannii complex. The registry gives an actual start date of 14 May 2026, an estimated 54 patients, sites in Israel and Greece, and an estimated primary completion in March 2027. Omnix announced the first patient dosed at Rabin Medical Center, and Indian Pharma Post and Patient Worthy reported in June 2026 that the first patients were enrolled at three Israeli hospitals. The trial's main aims are safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics, not proof that the drug cures infections.

The Technology: Punching Holes in Bacteria

Most antibiotics block a specific enzyme or process inside the bacterium, and bacteria can mutate around that target. Antimicrobial peptides, part of the innate immune system of insects and other animals, instead bind to the bacterial membrane and tear holes in it. They are fast but usually break down quickly in the body. Omnix says its platform makes such peptides harder to degrade, and CORDIS describes the result as "a new class of antibiotics" that is effective "regardless of underlying resistance patterns". European Biotechnology describes OMN6 as a small cyclic peptide from the cecropin family that attacks membranes rather than metabolic pathways.

Whether that mechanism really makes resistance rarer in patients is a company claim. Chief scientific officer Niv Bachnoff called it an approach "orders of magnitude less likely to induce resistance", according to Drug Development & Delivery. No clinical data on resistance has been published. The pipeline page lists two preclinical follow-ons, OMN-51 for Pseudomonas lung infections and OMN-71 for skin infections, according to Omnix.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project objective on CORDIS promised to "demonstrate clinical safety and efficacy in treating A. baumannii infections", followed by commercialisation with a pharmaceutical partner in a deal Omnix put at "€150-250", with no unit given, and sales of about €50 million five years after launch. Omnix's own award release said the money would take OMN6 "through clinical proof-of-concept studies". The final periodic report sets a narrower scope: "to initiate and complete Phase I clinical trials with OMN6 and get an approval for Phase II clinical studies".

Against that narrower scope, the record is good. Dosing in the first-in-human trial in Groningen began on 28 March 2022, according to an Omnix release. The CORDIS report says 80 healthy subjects, including elderly volunteers, were dosed in 10 cohorts with "no Severe or Serious Adverse Events" and dose-proportional blood levels; Drug Development & Delivery carried the same topline results, which Omnix released on 10 May 2023. The FDA cleared the Phase II trial on 20 November 2023, three weeks after the project ended, according to Omnix and Clinical Trials Arena. In February 2024 the FDA granted OMN6 fast-track designation.

1. Regulatory package and Phase I approvalDeliveredPhase I dosing began in March 2022, per Omnix and the CORDIS report.
2. First-in-human Phase I safety trialDelivered80 volunteers in 10 cohorts, no serious adverse events, per CORDIS and Drug Development & Delivery.
3. Approval for Phase IIDeliveredFDA clearance announced 20 November 2023, three weeks after the project end date.
4. Clinical efficacy against A. baumannii infectionsNot achievedPhase IIa started in May 2026; no patient results are public.
5. Commercialisation deal with a pharma partnerNot achievedNo licensing or partnership deal has been announced.

The gap is the move into patients. In November 2023 Bachnoff said Omnix expected to start Phase II "in the coming months". The registry shows the trial started on 14 May 2026, about 30 months after the FDA clearance and two and a half years after the EIC project ended. Omnix has not explained the delay publicly. The Series C announced in October 2025 was raised, in the CEO's words, so that Omnix would "now have the resources to complete Phase II proof-of-concept studies".

What Omnix Has Achieved Since the Award

The money kept coming. On 15 October 2025 Omnix announced a $25 million Series C co-led by Harel Insurance & Finance and the EIC Fund, with existing investors Entrée Capital, Tal Ventures, Xenia Ventures and Oriella Limited and new investors Prevail Partners and OurCrowd. CTech reported the same round and investors, and Beinsure confirmed the co-leads. CTech also reported that the FDA had granted OMN6 Qualified Infectious Disease Product status; the company's fast-track release does not mention it.

The funding totals do not add up neatly. Omnix said it had raised $10 million since founding when it announced its $8.5 million round in November 2020, then said two months later that it had "secured a total of €20 million from investors". In October 2025 it gave $43 million since 2015, while Beinsure counted $46 million across five rounds and flagged that the figures differ between sources.

In 2026 a second EU grant followed. PEPTAMR, a Horizon Europe health project coordinated by Omnix, runs from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2029 with a fully EU-funded budget of €7,918,150, of which €4,943,800 goes to Omnix, according to CORDIS. Its partners are Vivexia in France, the Medical University of Vienna, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Ecraid in the Netherlands, and the aim is a "regulatory-ready Phase 3 package", including a lung penetration study and a scalable formulation, according to Omnix and its kick-off report. Earlier, Omnix announced an NIH grant in August 2021, with no amount given.

Did the EIC Equity Arrive?

Yes, in some form. Omnix appears on page 11 of the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, its portfolio entry describes the OMN6 programme, and the Omnix board page lists an EIC Fund investment officer as a non-voting observer. The EIC Fund co-led the 2025 Series C. Neither the EIC nor Omnix has published when the Fund first invested or how much.

Why Europe Should Care

Antimicrobial resistance kills more than 35,000 people a year in the EU and EEA, and about 70% of those infections are picked up in healthcare settings, according to the European Commission, which says the Commission and member states named AMR one of the top three priority health threats in July 2022. A Council Recommendation of 13 June 2023 set five 2030 targets, including a 20% cut in human antibiotic consumption, and ECDC reported that bloodstream infections with carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella rose by almost 50% between 2019 and 2022, according to ECDC. Omnix's own CORDIS report names the commercial problem: physicians "often preserve newer antibiotics", which cuts the profit from developing them.

Omnix is an Israeli company, but much of its clinical work happens in Europe: Phase I ran in the Netherlands, the Phase IIa registry lists Greek sites, and the PEPTAMR partners are in Austria, Greece, France and the Netherlands. The EU has now backed OMN6 twice, through the EIC and through the Horizon Europe health programme, plus equity through the EIC Fund.

The Verdict

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