The EIC Accelerator Backed Ophiomics' Transplant Test: Did It Work

Liver transplantation is the best cure for early hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common liver cancer, but there are far fewer donor livers than patients. Hospitals decide who gets one mainly with clinical rules such as the Milan and San Francisco (UCSF) criteria, which set limits on the number and size of tumours. Ophiomics, a Lisbon company founded in 2015, built a test that adds the tumour's own biology to that decision: HepatoPredict reads the activity of four genes in a biopsy and combines it with clinical data in a machine learning algorithm to predict whether the cancer will come back after a transplant.

In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2019 cut-off, the European Commission selected Ophiomics for blended finance, a grant plus EIC equity. The grant was €756,956.38 towards a €1,081,366.25 project to optimise, industrialise and validate the test, according to CORDIS. The Commission's representation in Portugal announced it in December 2019 together with an equity investment of €3 million. The test reached the market: it carries a CE-IVD mark and has been sold in Europe since October 2022. What happened after that is harder to see.

Where Ophiomics Stands Now

Ophiomics is operating. The Portuguese company register, as shown by Racius, records two capital increases in February 2026, a filing of individual accounts in January 2026, and directors leaving and being appointed between January and March 2026; the seat moved in June 2024. eInforma lists balance sheets for 2023, 2024 and 2025 and shows that the company was converted from a private limited company (Lda) into a public limited company (S.A.). The figures themselves sit behind paywalls, so revenue, losses and headcount could not be verified for this article.

The company's website now names Tiago Machado as chief executive, a commercial manager who previously worked at Sequentia Biotech, Ares Genetics, Eurofins Biomnis and Beckman Coulter. Co-founder José Pereira Leal, who was still presented as CEO in a company post of 22 July 2025, no longer appears among the executives or the board. No announcement of the change could be found. In August 2026 Ophiomics advertised a job in business development and medical affairs.

The Technology: Tumour Biology in the Transplant Decision

The Milan and UCSF criteria use tumour number and diameter as stand-ins for how aggressive a cancer is, as the company's CORDIS project summary puts it, "surrogate markers of tumour stage and biology". Ophiomics' argument is that this rules out some patients who would be cured and admits others who relapse. In its project summary the company put the success rate of the clinical criteria at 67% and claimed 95% for its tool; the final CORDIS report speaks of "up to 94% precision" while identifying "at least 30% more" patients who benefit from a transplant.

The test measures four target genes and three reference genes by real-time PCR in RNA from a formalin-fixed tumour biopsy, and an algorithm combines the result with clinical variables, according to Biocartis' launch announcement. The founding study, published in Annals of Surgery in 2022, used tissue from 138 patients transplanted at Lisbon's Curry Cabral hospital with more than five years of follow-up. It reports a positive predictive value of 88.5% to 94.4% and says the test "outperforms" Milan and UCSF. A larger, two-centre refinement with the Coimbra and Valencia hospitals followed in Cancers in February 2025, which found the result held when biopsies came from smaller or non-dominant nodules.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

HepatoPredict was signed on 20 April 2020 and ran from 1 May 2020 to 30 April 2022. It followed a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study in 2018. The October 2019 Commission list names only Ophiomics for this project, with no partner companies. The objective was to "complete the clinical validation and product optimization" so the test could be sold in Europe first. In its final report the company lists what it did: a kit for pathology laboratories and an in-house laboratory test, both read out through a cloud platform called MyOphiomics; regulatory files for CE-IVD marking, submitted in May 2022; a manufacturing line with a stated capacity of 2,000 kits a year; and the distribution deal with Biocartis. It also says clinical validation was "sufficiently completed to support initial commercial development", with cohorts from France, Spain and the UK still pending.

1. Industrialised kit for pathology labsDeliveredKit and laboratory test finished, per CORDIS; ISO 13485 certificate shown on the company website.
2. CE-IVD markingDeliveredLaunched as a CE-IVD kit on 10 October 2022, per Biocartis and Labiotech.
3. European commercial launchPartlyOn sale since 2022; no sales volume, customer list or reimbursement has been announced, and the launch partner dropped the test.
4. Retrospective clinical validationDeliveredPublished in Annals of Surgery (2022) and Cancers (2025).
5. Prospective clinical validationNot achieved13 of 40 patients recruited by April 2022; no results announced since.
6. 27 new jobs within five years of the projectNot achievedNo such growth announced by the company or anyone else; the five-year window runs to April 2027.

On the core promise, an industrialised and CE-marked product, the project delivered, and roughly on schedule: the CE file went in a month after the project closed and the launch came five months later. Co-founder Pereira Leal later told the EU's research magazine, in an article published on 9 January 2023, that "the product would not have existed without the grant"; the article reported that two or three patients had already received a liver thanks to the test.

The Prospective Trial

The stronger evidence would come from a prospective study, in which the test actually guides decisions. Ophiomics and the Lisbon central hospital centre registered one, NCT04499833, which started on 25 March 2021 with 40 patients planned. When the EIC project closed, 13 had been recruited. The registry entry was last updated in June 2022 and still shows the trial as recruiting, with an estimated primary completion in October 2028. A second, retrospective study with University Hospitals Birmingham, NCT06894524, was registered in March 2025 for 200 patients and an estimated completion in April 2026; its entry has not been updated since and no results are posted.

What Happened After the Launch

The commercial route changed. Biocartis, a listed Belgian diagnostics company, signed the European distribution deal on 8 February 2022 and launched the kit in October 2022, with the aim of an automated version on its Idylla platform "depending on the successful commercial uptake of the kit". Biocartis then ran into its own financial trouble: after a 2023 restructuring its secured creditors took over the operating business, and the listed parent was to be wound down, according to Belga News Agency and DC Advisory, which advised the creditors. Today Biocartis' test menu no longer lists HepatoPredict and its former Ophiomics and HepatoPredict pages return "access denied". No Idylla version was announced. In June 2025 Ophiomics announced that HepatoPredict was available directly from Ophiomics "in multiple EU countries" and its product page now invites distributors to get in touch. Whether and when the Biocartis agreement ended has not been made public.

VCBacked lists a $6.5 million Series A in January 2023, with BlueCrow Capital, the European Innovation Council and EISMEA as investors. The amount could not be confirmed by a second opened source, and Ophiomics has not published it on its website. Since 2025 the company's news has focused on HepatoDetect, a blood test for early detection of liver cancer in patients with cirrhosis, which it says showed "encouraging first results"; no regulatory approval has been announced for it.

Ophiomics also won a share of new EU money. It is a partner in LEOPARD, a €6.32 million Horizon Europe project coordinated by the Paris public hospitals (AP-HP) from November 2023 to October 2028, which is building artificial intelligence tools to allocate livers more fairly; Ophiomics' share of the EU contribution is €358,557.50.

The EIC Equity That Cannot Be Traced

The equity half of the blended award is the least transparent part of the story. In December 2019 the Commission announced €3 million of equity for Ophiomics. Portugal's innovation agency ANI later reported that Ophiomics was "the first Portuguese enterprise to sign a contract" with the EIC Fund, for an investment of €1 million; that page is no longer online and its date could not be verified. Ophiomics does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all of its pages for this article.

Why Europe Should Care

Liver cancer cases in Europe have tripled since 1980, and in 2020 about 87,000 Europeans were diagnosed with it and 78,000 died of it, according to the EU's research magazine. Europe's Beating Cancer Plan, presented on 3 February 2021, is built around prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment, and quality of life. A test that sends scarce donor livers to the patients most likely to be cured fits the diagnosis and treatment pillar, and HepatoDetect would fit early detection; the EU has kept paying for this line of work through LEOPARD. The Danish authors write that of the prognostic gene signatures proposed for this cancer, "none are implemented in the clinical setting", which makes a certified, sold product from a European company unusual, whatever its sales.

The Verdict

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