S-Biomedic Took EIC Accelerator Money for Acne Bacteria, Then Sold

Most acne products attack the skin's bacteria. S-Biomedic, a Belgian start-up, wanted to do the opposite: take strains of Cutibacterium acnes from people with healthy skin and apply them to people without it, so that the benign strains crowd out the ones linked to inflammation. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2019 cut-off the European Commission selected its SkinMicrobiome project for blended finance, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names "S-Biomedic N.V:" (with a stray colon) of "Beersel" as the only beneficiary of the project. The company was in fact based at Turnhoutseweg 30 in Beerse, the address CORDIS gives.

The grant was €1,299,238.50, 70% of a €1,856,055 project that ran from 1 February 2020 to 31 January 2022. Its goal was to launch the company's first cosmetic for acne-prone skin in 2021 and reach sales of more than €55 million by 2028, "positioning it among the Top 10 acne brands globally". The product, sold under the name Sencyr, did launch. In December 2022 Beiersdorf, the Hamburg owner of Nivea and Eucerin, acquired a majority stake in the company. Sencyr's last public customer review dates from November 2022.

What S-Biomedic Is Now

S-Biomedic is an active company owned by Beiersdorf. The Belgian Crossroads Bank for Enterprises lists it as a public limited company in a "normal situation", with its registered seat moved from Beerse to Ghent on 1 October 2024, according to the KBO register. Its board includes Gitta Neufang and Stefan Gallinat, both appointed on 15 December 2022, the day before the takeover was announced; Neufang is also quoted in Beiersdorf's announcement of the deal. North Data lists Beiersdorf AG and maxingvest GmbH & Co. KGaA as shareholders.

Beiersdorf said S-Biomedic would be run "as a standalone entity" under its own microbiome programme. The company's website now calls it "a Beiersdorf company" doing R&D for "microbiome-based skincare" and names no product. Its 2025 accounts, filed on 15 July 2026, show an operating profit of €136,989, according to Staatsbladmonitor, and a net profit of €259,601 with 12.2 full-time staff, according to Companyweb. Management changed again in late 2025: the register names Marie Van Houte as the person in charge of daily management since 3 December 2025.

The Takeover

Beiersdorf first bought into S-Biomedic in July 2018 with what it called a single-digit million euro investment, as part of a first financing round of €2 million, according to Chemanager and BeautyMatter. In February 2019 DSM Venturing joined and the Series A closed at €4 million in total, according to NutraIngredients. The sources do not make clear whether the €2 million of 2018 is part of the €4 million.

On 16 December 2022 Beiersdorf announced that it had acquired a majority stake. Neither side disclosed the price or the size of the stake. FashionUnited and S-Biomedic's investor Verve Ventures also report a majority stake, while Personal Care Magazine described it as an acquisition of the company and S-Biomedic's own website says it "became a full part" of Beiersdorf in 2022. Whether minority shareholders remain could not be verified.

The Technology: Skin Bacteria Against Acne

Acne is linked to the overgrowth of certain strains of Cutibacterium acnes (formerly Propionibacterium acnes) in blocked hair follicles. The standard treatments are antibiotics, benzoyl peroxide and retinoids such as isotretinoin, which the CORDIS objective calls "either ineffective" or prone to "severe side-effects". S-Biomedic's idea is to change the population instead of killing it: apply live strains of the same species taken from healthy skin, so that they settle and push out the strains associated with inflammation.

The founders published the principle in 2019 in the journal Microbiome. In "Skin microbiome modulation induced by probiotic solutions", Paetzold, Güell and colleagues report that after repeated application of a donor's skin bacteria, the recipient's skin microbiome became more similar to the donor's. In February 2020 the company's chief scientific officer, Bernhard Paetzold, said the team had seen better results with a multi-strain solution on skin rich in one specific C. acnes subtype, according to Personal Care Magazine.

This is the main difference from most "probiotic" skincare, which uses gut bacteria such as lactobacilli or their lysates. S-Biomedic uses skin-native strains, and it sold them alive. Verve Ventures called Sencyr "the first time worldwide that a product incorporating the beneficial skin bacterium c. acnes hit the shelves". That claim comes from an investor and could not be checked independently. Because the product was sold as a cosmetic, not a medicine, it did not need the clinical trials and marketing authorisation a drug would require, and it could not claim to treat a disease.

What SkinMicrobiome Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project plan on CORDIS was a route-to-market plan rather than a research project. It promised a launch of the acne cosmetic "in 2021 in selected European countries", new hires with "commercial and marketing background", sales of more than €55 million by 2028 and a 2.58% share of the global acne market. It named Johnson & Johnson, DSM and Beiersdorf as the industrial partners behind the company.

The final periodic report, covering February 2021 to January 2022, states that "we have achieved all defined objectives and successfully placed a novel LiveSkin Probiotic skincare product in the European market". It describes consumer research, formulation, stability and packaging tests, consumer and clinical studies, and a launch "via Direct to Consumer online channel (webshop)", with social media as the sales channel. It shows the product as a 30-day kit of ten LiveSkin Probiotics vials, a cleanser and a day serum under the Sencyr brand. CORDIS lists no deliverables or publications for the project.

The launch is confirmed outside the report. The earliest of 32 reviews of Sencyr on Trustpilot is dated 6 January 2022, within the project's last month, and Verve Ventures says the brand launched in the German market in 2022. That puts the launch at the turn of 2021 and 2022, close to the plan, but in one market and online only, not in "selected European countries" as far as public sources show.

1. Launch an acne cosmetic with live skin bacteriaDeliveredSencyr sold online from January 2022 at the latest, per the CORDIS report and Trustpilot.
2. Clinical and consumer studies to support claimsPartlyTopline results announced; no study size or peer-reviewed results found.
3. Launch in selected European countries in 2021UnverifiedOne webshop; Verve names only Germany, in 2022.
4. Hire commercial and marketing staffUnverifiedAbout 12 full-time staff in every year from 2022 to 2025.
5. Top 10 acne brand, over €55M sales by 2028Not achievedNo Sencyr review after November 2022; sencyr.com no longer shows the brand.

The commercial targets are where the record breaks off. Trustpilot shows no Sencyr review after 18 November 2022, a month before the takeover, and no review in the last 12 months. On 8 October 2026 the sencyr.com address returned an unrelated page about responsible gaming. Neither S-Biomedic nor Beiersdorf has announced that the brand was withdrawn, so when and why it stopped selling could not be verified. Beiersdorf has not said whether S-Biomedic's strains are used in any Nivea or Eucerin product.

What Came After the Grant

Three days after the EIC project started, on 4 February 2020, DSM signed on as S-Biomedic's worldwide exclusive manufacturing and go-to-market partner for the acne active, with commercialisation planned "within the next 18-24 months", according to DSM and Personal Care Magazine. No DSM product based on the strains has been announced since. In October 2022 S-Biomedic itself began offering a single live strain, CA-31, to other skincare brands as an ingredient called CutiNaturalis, according to Personal Care Magazine; no brand using it has been named.

The company kept filing patents after the takeover. North Data lists applications on a cosmetic preparation against acne and a freeze-dried composition with a non-pathogenic C. acnes strain, both published on 3 June 2026, and earlier ones on skin ageing and oxidative stress. North Data records no other EU grant for the company besides SkinMicrobiome, and the company's website names only that grant and support from the Flemish agency VLAIO.

The Money

S-Biomedic's filed accounts show an operating loss in every year the company filed as an independent business (no accounts are listed for 2018). The worst year was 2022, the year of the takeover, with an operating loss of €6,132,256 and a negative gross margin of €2,949,357, according to Staatsbladmonitor; Companyweb gives a net loss of €6,136,291. The accounts do not explain the loss in public summaries, and the reason could not be verified. Equity nevertheless rose from €1,090,299 to €2,266,238 that year, which means that about €7.3 million was added to equity in 2022. North Data's register extracts show several capital changes between June 2022 and December 2024; the KBO register now gives the capital as €2,266,238.

Since 2023 the company has run close to break-even, with a gross margin of €3 million to €4.4 million a year. The public account summaries do not show who pays for its work, so how much of that income comes from Beiersdorf could not be verified. Its debts rose from €176,359 at the end of 2019 to €6,339,542 at the end of 2024, before falling to €4,081,835 at the end of 2025.

Was the EIC Equity Ever Invested?

The Commission's October 2019 list marks SkinMicrobiome as "Blended", meaning a grant plus an equity investment by the EIC. Only the grant is recorded. CORDIS shows an EU contribution of €1,299,238.50 and no other EU funding. The EIC Fund's portfolio list, checked page by page on 8 October 2026 across all 326 organisations, does not include S-Biomedic, and no announcement by the company, Beiersdorf or the EIC mentions an EIC equity stake. No public record shows that the equity part of the award was ever invested, and no source says why; whether the EIC withdrew it or the company declined it could not be verified.

Why Europe Should Care

The project's public-interest case rested on antibiotics. Acne is one of the most common reasons for long courses of oral and topical antibiotics, and the CORDIS report argues that a bacterial alternative "shall help to reduce the consumption and disposal of antibiotics". That fits the EU's fight against antimicrobial resistance: the 2017 One Health Action Plan and a Council Recommendation of 13 June 2023 that set a target of a 20% cut in total human antibiotic consumption by 2030 from 2019 levels, according to the European Commission and AMR Insights. A cosmetic, however, cannot claim to treat acne, and no data show that Sencyr replaced any antibiotic prescriptions.

The ownership story also says something about the EIC. The EU money went to a company whose shareholders already included two of the world's large skincare and ingredient groups. The technology stayed in Europe, with a German consumer goods company and in a Belgian lab, but it ended up inside a large corporation rather than as the independent European acne brand that the EIC plan described.

The Verdict

This article is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.