The EIC Accelerator Backed Plasmacure's Cold Plasma: Did It Work

Plasmacure, a Dutch medical device company founded in 2014, makes PLASOMA: a flexible pad laid on a chronic wound and a pulser that sends high-voltage pulses into it, turning the air under the pad into cold plasma, an ionised gas that kills bacteria. In the January 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot it was selected for blended finance, a grant plus equity, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names Plasmacure alone for the project. The grant was €2,498,877 towards a €3,596,387.50 project that ran from 1 September 2020 to 31 December 2023, according to CORDIS.

The money was meant to buy proof. Plasmacure told the EU it would run "a multinational clinical study" to show that PLASOMA cures chronic wounds, extend its CE claim from reducing bacteria to curing wounds, win reimbursement and get into treatment guidelines. It also promised larger pads, a home-use pulser and, with the equity, a launch in four EU countries, with break-even in 2024 and "a turnover of € 30 million and 55 fte" in 2025. Six years later the company is active and has new investors, but most of that plan has not happened.

Where Plasmacure Stands Now

Plasmacure is operating. It filed its balance sheet for 2025 in June 2026 and registered new designs for wound plasters in July 2026, according to North Data, which shows no insolvency publication. The register lists addresses on Transistorweg in Nijmegen and at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven; CORDIS gave an Eindhoven address when the grant was signed, and 2025 coverage places the company in Nijmegen. The Dutch insolvency register could not be queried for this article because its search returned no data. The figures in the filed accounts are behind North Data's paywall, so revenue, losses and staff could not be verified.

The biggest recent event was a €6 million Series A on 7 July 2025, led by Venture Medical, LLC of the United States, with the Dutch health insurer Coöperatie VGZ, the impact investor Noaber and Stichting Triade, alongside existing shareholders the EIC Fund and Oost NL, according to ioplus and the High Tech Campus. Venture Medical is to finance the US regulatory and reimbursement route and become the US distributor once approval is secured. The size of that US commitment differs between sources: "more than $10 million" in the company's announcement, and "€8.5M+" in Silicon Canals. Patsnap describes US FDA clearance as a goal, not an achievement, and a search of the FDA's 510(k) clearance database finds no entry for Plasmacure.

The Technology: Plasma Under a Plaster

Cold plasma has been used to sterilise medical equipment since the 1980s, according to the company's interview with ioplus. Plasmacure's idea is to make it at the wound. The pad goes on the wound, the pulser energises it, and the air in the gap becomes a plasma of reactive particles for a two-minute treatment, according to the company's product site. The company says this breaks down biofilm, kills bacteria including antibiotic-resistant strains, and stimulates blood flow and tissue repair. Standard care for hard-to-heal wounds is cleaning, debridement and dressings, which PLASOMA is meant to add to rather than replace, according to the CORDIS report. Plasmacure's pitch is the flat disposable pad, which it says can be used at home, "where 80% of the patients are treated".

The early evidence was small. A 20-patient safety study of a PLASOMA prototype on diabetic foot ulcers at Amsterdam UMC found no serious device-related effects, a drop in Staphylococcus aureus load and a mean 43% reduction in ulcer area, but three infections at the treated site within a month, according to the Journal of Wound Care. That trial was announced with the company's 2018 Series A from NextGen Ventures and Oost NL, according to EIT Health.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The final periodic report, covering March 2022 to December 2023, describes "a multi-center three-arm phase 3 clinical study" that "will include in total hundreds of patients", with arms receiving standard care alone or with PLASOMA once or twice a week. That matches the PETH trial registered by Plasmacure on ClinicalTrials.gov. The registry tells a different story from the report: PETH ran at two Dutch home-care organisations, enrolled 46 patients and was terminated on 20 April 2023 because "the continuation of the study was rendered unreasonable due to the slow inclusion rate". The report, filed after that date, says only that it was "too early" to show results.

The PETH results were published in 2024 in Advances in Wound Care. Within 12 weeks, 61.5% of venous leg ulcers healed with twice-weekly PLASOMA and 53.3% with weekly treatment, against 25.0% with standard care alone, with no device-related serious adverse events. Neither difference was statistically significant (p = 0.08 and p = 0.16). These are the figures behind the company's headline that PLASOMA closes "2.5x more" wounds, which appears on its website and in the 2025 funding coverage without the sample size or the p-values.

A second Plasmacure trial, PULSE, a two-arm study of 101 patients at six Dutch hospitals and wound centres, was completed on 16 December 2024, according to ClinicalTrials.gov. No results have been posted there, and no publication of them was found.

1. CE marking and EU market entryDeliveredCE-marked since 2020 per ioplus; "available on the EU market" per CORDIS.
2. Multinational efficacy trial with hundreds of patientsNot achievedBoth trials were Dutch only; the three-arm trial stopped at 46 patients.
3. Published efficacy dataPartlyPETH published with positive but non-significant results; PULSE results not public.
4. CE claim extended to curing woundsNot achievedNo extended claim has been announced.
5. Reimbursement and treatment guidelinesNot achievedA reimbursement study only started in November 2024.
6. Larger pads and home-use pulserNot achieved"Prepared and prototyped" at project end; no launch announced.
7. Launch in 4 EU countries; €30M turnover and 55 FTE in 2025Not achievedNo launch abroad announced; the Netherlands was still the main market in 2024.

The project ended on schedule on paper, but the core deliverable, clinical proof strong enough for reimbursement, was not produced within it. The September 2024 profile of the company still names the Netherlands as its current market, with other European countries, the US and China as targets.

The Long Road to Reimbursement

The decisive evidence will now come from someone else. In October 2024 the wound centre of St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein received €2.1 million from Zorginstituut Nederland, the body that advises on what Dutch basic insurance covers, to study Plasmacure's cold plasma on diabetic foot ulcers and leg ulcers from 1 November 2024; the results are due to go to the institute "in about four years", which will then decide on reimbursement, according to ioplus. The trial, COSMOS, is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov by the St. Antonius vascular surgeon Olaf Bakker as sponsor, with 494 patients planned and completion estimated for November 2028. In November 2025 it was not yet recruiting. Bakker was also the first author of the PETH paper.

Why Europe Should Care

Chronic wounds affect at least three million people in the EU, according to the CORDIS project summary, and their infections are a standing reason to prescribe antibiotics. The EU counts more than 35,000 deaths a year in the EU/EEA from antibiotic-resistant infections, and in June 2023 the Council adopted a recommendation to step up action against antimicrobial resistance, according to the European Commission. A device that cuts bacterial load in wounds without drugs fits that agenda, and Plasmacure's own CORDIS objective presents reduced antibiotic use as a benefit. Whether it saves money, as the company claims, is exactly what the Dutch reimbursement study is meant to settle.

There is also a strategic irony. The EU funded the clinical proof and the EIC Fund took equity, but the round that now funds approval and distribution in the largest medical device market is led by an American company, which will become Plasmacure's US commercial partner.

The Verdict

Plasmacure has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, trial registrations, published papers and company statements, linked throughout.