Following the EIC Accelerator Money at Osivax: Flu Data Still Due

Every autumn, flu vaccines are rebuilt around the strains expected to circulate, because the proteins on the virus surface that they target keep mutating. Osivax, a French biotech founded in 2017, is trying to skip that cycle. Its candidate, OVX836, targets the nucleoprotein, a protein inside the influenza A virus that barely changes from strain to strain. In the European Innovation Council's March 2020 round, the EIC Accelerator pilot backed the company with blended finance, a grant plus equity, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names OSIVAX SAS of Paris as the only beneficiary of the OSIRIX project.

The grant was €2,461,122.48 towards a €3,515,889.25 project that ran from 1 April 2020 to 30 September 2022, according to CORDIS. Its stated aim was to get OVX836 "ready for the clinical proof-of-efficacy milestone (Phase IIb)". On top of that, the EIC committed up to €15 million in equity to Osivax's Series B round, for a total of up to €17.5 million, according to the company's July 2020 announcement and Unquote. Six years on, the Phase 2b trial has been run, but its result has not been published.

Where Osivax Stands Now

Osivax is active. The French company register lists it as an operating company with 20 to 49 employees in 2024 and three registered sites, two of them open, according to the government's company search service. Its share capital was raised in a series of steps published in January 2026 and again in September 2026, according to BODACC and North Data, which also show that the accounts for 2022, 2023 and 2024 were published only in 2026. No insolvency notice appears in either source.

On 27 August 2026 Osivax signed a collaboration with GC Biopharma of South Korea to develop a single shot that combines OVX836 with GC Biopharma's seasonal flu vaccine, GC FLU. Osivax gets a non-exclusive global licence to use GC FLU with OVX836, outside Japan and Korea, and leads development; financial terms were not disclosed, according to the company announcement, also carried by GlobeNewswire. That release describes OVX836 as "currently in Phase 2b clinical trials" and cites "encouraging efficacy proof of concept data", without giving any Phase 2b figures.

The Missing Readout

The Phase 2b trial, called Asuniva, is the efficacy test the EIC grant was meant to prepare. It vaccinated its first participant on 16 September 2025, according to Osivax, and finished enrolling 2,850 adults aged 18 to 59 in Belgium, France, Finland and Germany in December 2025. Each received a single 480 µg dose of OVX836 or a placebo. In its enrolment announcement the company said it expected topline results in mid-2026, "depending on influenza circulation during the 2025-2026 winter season".

The trial registry still gives an estimated primary completion date of 29 May 2026, lists the study as active and not recruiting, and shows no results; its last update was posted on 17 December 2025, according to ClinicalTrials.gov. Osivax's news page lists no readout announcement up to 14 October 2026. Whether the data are late, under analysis or were inconclusive because too few participants caught flu cannot be determined from public sources.

The Technology: Aiming Inside the Virus

Conventional flu vaccines train antibodies against haemagglutinin, a surface protein that drifts each season. The CORDIS summary puts their efficacy at "40% on average, as low as 9% in elderly". OVX836 instead carries the nucleoprotein of an H1N1 influenza A strain, fused to an oligomerisation domain called OVX313, according to the Phase 2a paper; Osivax calls the resulting self-assembling nanoparticle platform oligoDOM. The aim is to prime T cells, which kill infected cells, rather than only antibodies that block infection. Because the nucleoprotein is shared across influenza A strains, the vaccine would not need to be reformulated every year, according to the project objective.

The positioning has shifted since 2020. The EIC proposal sold OVX836 as a "universal multi-season influenza vaccine" that would replace annual updates. Osivax now describes it as a "broad-spectrum influenza A vaccine candidate" and says it aims for a seasonal vaccine "by combining OVX836 with standard flu vaccines", according to its December 2025 release, which is the model of the GC Biopharma deal. As an influenza A vaccine, it does not cover influenza B.

What OSIRIX Promised, and What the Record Shows

The OSIRIX grant ran from April 2020 to September 2022. Its final periodic report on CORDIS says the Phase 2a trial was finished, met its primary T-cell endpoint and showed safety "similar to the seasonal influenza vaccine", with "directional evidence of efficacy" from fewer flu-like symptoms in the 180 µg group than in the 90 µg group. A separate Phase 2a trial of 137 adults in Belgium, recruited between November 2021 and February 2022, tested doses of up to 480 µg without reaching a maximum tolerated dose; its paper, which credits the EU's Horizon 2020 programme among its funders, was published in July 2023, according to Europe PMC.

For the Phase 2b, the report says a GMP batch was produced in 2021, the full regulatory package was submitted, a European contract research organisation was chosen and site selection in France, Belgium and Germany was under way. The trial was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov in October 2022. It then waited almost three years for its first participant, and when the Series B first close finally came in March 2025, Osivax said the money would fund that same study, according to the company and Pulse 2.0. In 2020 the company had planned the Phase 2b with 3,500 subjects; the trial that started in 2025 enrolled 2,850.

1. Finish the Phase 2a trialDeliveredPrimary endpoint met, per the CORDIS report; published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in 2023.
2. Make OVX836 ready for Phase 2bLateGMP batch and regulatory file done by 2022; the trial started only in September 2025.
3. Phase 2b proof of efficacyNot achievedReadout promised for mid-2026; no result published by 14 October 2026.
4. Licensing deal of over €500M with big pharma in 2024Not achievedOnly a Japan option with KM Biologics (2024) and a GC Biopharma collaboration (2026), terms undisclosed.
5. Coronavirus vaccine in Phase 1 by mid-2023LateOVX033 trial started January 2024 and ended November 2024; no results posted.
6. Pandemic market entry in the US in 2026Not achievedOVX836 is not approved anywhere.

The grant did what a grant can do: it paid for clinical work that was finished and published. The commercial plan in the proposal did not hold. The CORDIS objective predicted a licensing deal of more than €500 million with a large pharmaceutical company in 2024. What came in 2024 was an exclusive option for KM Biologics, a Meiji Group company, to license Osivax's universal flu candidates in Japan, with an upfront payment and undisclosed terms, according to BioSpectrum Asia. The final report also forecast market entry for pandemic use in the US in 2026 and for the elderly in 2027.

The Coronavirus Side Project

OSIRIX also funded the early discovery of a coronavirus vaccine built on the same platform, and the final report expected a Phase 1 trial in mid-2023. That candidate, OVX033, which targets the nucleocapsid protein of sarbecoviruses, vaccinated its first participant at the Cochin hospital in Paris in early 2024, with French government support through France 2030 operated by Bpifrance, according to Osivax. The 48-person trial started on 8 January 2024 and was completed on 29 November 2024, according to ClinicalTrials.gov, which lists no results. Osivax has not published a next step for the programme.

Following the Money

Osivax has raised more public money than private money that it has disclosed. Before the EIC, it raised €2.7 million in seed funding in 2017 from Pradeyrol Développement and family offices and an €8 million Series A led by Noshaq, according to Unquote; both investors still have representatives on its supervisory board, according to the company register and the company's website. In 2020, alongside the EIC package, Bpifrance pledged a €15.1 million grant for the coronavirus programme. In 2023 the Gates Foundation gave a grant of over USD 1 million, according to Osivax. In August 2025 the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) awarded $19.5 million under a multi-year agreement, $11.5 million for OVX836 development and $8 million to prepare a large field efficacy study, with options that could fund a Phase 2b trial and manufacturing scale-up, according to Santelog and Lyonbiopole.

The EIC equity was the bridge to the Phase 2b, and its fate is only partly public. The EIC Fund's official list of invested companies includes Osivax, and its portfolio page uses the OSIRIX project title; Osivax's own website shows the EIC Fund among its investors. Neither says how much was invested or when. The only Series B money announced is the €10 million first close of March 2025, which brought in Meiji Seika Pharma; the release did not name the existing investors who joined it or mention the EIC Fund. Whether the full €15 million commitment was invested could not be verified.

The filed accounts show losses that peaked in the year the EIC project ended. Osivax SAS lost €5.41 million in 2022, €3.50 million in 2023 and €2.99 million in 2024, on revenue of €59,080 in 2024, according to the INPI ratios published by the French Ministry of Economy. The 2019 to 2021 figures are not in that dataset. These are the accounts of the French company alone; Osivax also operates from Angleur in Belgium, and whether a Belgian entity carries part of the cost is not stated in the sources reviewed.

Other EU Projects

CORDIS lists Osivax as a small partner in two Horizon 2020 malaria vaccine consortia led by the University of Oxford, both running from 2017 to 2022: MultiViVax, with a net EU contribution to Osivax of €35,873.56, and OptiMalVax, with €19,841.95, according to the MultiViVax and OptiMalVax fact sheets. OSIRIX is its only EIC award.

Why Europe Should Care

Influenza is one of the pathogens the EU is preparing for most explicitly. The Commission set up HERA, its health emergency authority, after COVID-19 to ensure "the development, manufacturing, procurement and equitable distribution of key medical countermeasures". Its Medical Countermeasures Strategy, published in July 2025, sets "next generation influenza vaccines" as one of four targets for 2030, according to the Commission's factsheet and Chronicle.lu. A strain-independent vaccine is the kind of product that could be stockpiled before a pandemic strain is known.

The financing record cuts the other way. The largest single outside award to Osivax since 2025 came from the US government, its new strategic investor and licensing partners are Japanese and Korean, and the April 2026 adjuvant work is with CEPI, the global vaccine coalition. If OVX836 succeeds, an option on Japan and the Korean rights to the combination shot already sit with Asian partners.

The Verdict

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