SagaNatura Merged After Its EIC Accelerator Bladder Herb Trial

SagaNatura, a supplement maker in Hafnarfjörður, Iceland, was selected in the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot that became the EIC Accelerator. The grant-only award paid €1,562,729 towards NO-GO, a €2,232,470 project to turn the company's angelica leaf supplement SagaPro into a standardised product for overactive bladder, prove it in a clinical trial and prepare sales in Europe and North America, according to CORDIS. SagaNatura is the only beneficiary named for the project, and the only Icelandic company on the European Commission's list of selected companies for that round. The project ran from 1 May 2019 to 31 October 2021.

Seven years after the award, the record is mixed. The company reported a new formula, a GMP capsule line, five hectares of cultivated angelica and patent filings. The trial it promised on 200 people randomised 143, and the paper that reported it in December 2025 found improvements in daytime urination and quality of life but not a statistically significant effect on night-time urination. No EU health claim followed. In September 2023 SagaNatura merged with the Icelandic herbal medicine company Florealis, and the products are now sold by Florealis ehf.

Where SagaNatura Stands Now

On 7 September 2023, Florealis, a maker of registered herbal medicines founded in 2013, announced it would merge with SagaNatura, with SagaNatura's shareholders taking a 64.5% stake in Florealis and the combined company based in SagaNatura's premises in Hafnarfjörður, according to Northstack. Florealis chief executive Karl Guðmundsson said most Icelandic companies in the sector were "too small to make a real effort to expand". The Icelandic company register shows demerger documents ("skipting") for SagaNatura ehf. filed on 23 August 2023, and the company is now registered care of Florealis ehf. at Bæjarhrauni 22, Hafnarfjörður, according to Skatturinn. That address differs from Suðurhella 8, the address SagaNatura gave CORDIS and still gives on its English website.

SagaNatura ehf. has not been dissolved: it filed accounts for 2025 on 15 June 2026, and Florealis ehf. filed its own 2025 accounts on 16 September 2026. The contents of those accounts are not available free of charge, so revenue, losses and staff since the award could not be verified. The Icelandic online shop at saganatura.is presents "Saga Natura og Florealis" as one company, is run by Florealis ehf. and still sells SagaPro alongside astaxanthin products and Florealis's medical products. The paper reporting the EU-funded trial describes the beneficiary as "SagaNatura (now Florealis ehf)", according to Food Science & Nutrition.

The Technology: An Old Icelandic Herb, a New Compound

Overactive bladder causes urgency, frequent urination and waking at night to urinate. CORDIS cites prevalence above 10% of the population, about 500 million people, and says current drug treatments carry side effects and dropout rates of 80% within a year; these figures come from the company's own project summary. SagaNatura's alternative is an extract of the leaves of Angelica archangelica, a plant that grows wild in Iceland. SagaMedica launched the extract as SagaPro in 2005, and the company calls it Iceland's top-selling non-prescription urinary product, according to CORDIS. It is sold as a food supplement, not as a medicine.

The NO-GO plan was to move from a whole-plant extract to a formula with a fixed amount of one active compound, called C-08 in the project. Dr. Steinþór Sigurðsson, a SagaNatura scientist, had found "a previously unknown compound in Icelandic angelica that has a relaxing effect on the bladder", the company said on its project page. SagaNatura's patent filings of February 2020, published as WO 2020/165925 and granted in the United States as patent 11,850,257 on 26 December 2023, claim the use of cnidimoside A, which can be taken from angelica, to enhance the body's beta-adrenergic response and treat overactive bladder, nocturia and incontinence, according to IPqwery and Google Patents. Whether C-08 and cnidimoside A are the same substance is not stated in either source.

That earlier trial, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Urology in 2012 and funded by Iceland's Technology Development Fund, is the "small-scale clinical trial on 66 patients" that the CORDIS summary presents as proof of efficacy. A larger, independent trial was the point of the EU grant.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

SagaNatura had first received a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 grant in 2017, as SagaMedica, for a feasibility study of the same product, then called SagaPro+, according to CORDIS; a second €50,000 Phase 1 grant in 2016 went to its microalgae culturing tank, Sustain-ALGae. The Phase 2 grant was the large one: about ISK 200 million, which the company said would fund a clinical trial, a new product with a standard amount of the active substance and the cultivation and breeding of angelica, in a December 2019 announcement republished from Viðskiptablaðið.

The final periodic report, covering May 2020 to October 2021, lists the objectives: a final NO-GO composition, manufacturing capacity, a large clinical validation, documentation for EFSA health claims, GMP, a patent and a sales plan that would reach "over 1.5 million packets in 5 years". It reports that the new formula is "based on a standardized content of the compound C-08 per capsule", that a capsulation machine and an extract dryer were running, that five hectares had been sown with angelica seed from areas high in C-08, that GMP had been implemented in a new capsulation and packaging facility, and that a method-of-use patent had been filed as a PCT application. It also says that "due to Covid-19, the clinical trial did not reach the intended number of participants", while calling the results "statistically significant". The report, last updated on CORDIS in January 2022, still describes "the first half of project NO-GO" as finalised.

The Trial: Smaller, Later and Mixed

The trial was registered as NCT04357223, sponsored by SagaNatura with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, for an estimated 200 participants. It started on 1 May 2020. The registry entry was last updated in November 2020, its status is "unknown", and no results have been posted there.

The results appeared on 8 December 2025 in Food Science & Nutrition, authored by researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the University of Valladolid, who state that design, analysis and reporting were "performed entirely independent of SagaNatura/Florealis ehf". The paper calls it a "pilot" trial: 143 adults were randomised to 200 mg of angelica leaf extract a day, given as SagaPro capsules, or to placebo for six weeks, and 110 completed it. The authors say the pandemic "hampered both the recruitment process and the follow-up period" and that the study "did not include a specific analysis of the bioactive compounds" in the extract. The paper names no standardised C-08 product.

The supplement group improved more than placebo on daytime voids (p = 0.004), the storage subscore of the International Prostate Symptom Score (p = 0.025) and quality of life (p < 0.001). The improvement in nocturia, measured through the same questionnaire, was "nearly significant" (p = 0.069). The authors concluded that the extract "was able to improve daytime voids, QoL, and IPSS storage subscore in adults with OAB symptomatology". Effect sizes, reported as generalised eta squared, ranged from 0.03 to 0.12.

1. Standardised NO-GO formulaReported onlyThe final report says the C-08 formula is done; no product named NO-GO is on sale, and the trial used SagaPro.
2. In-house production, GMPDeliveredCapsule line, dryer and GMP facility reported; cultivation and harvests also described on the company news page in 2022.
3. Clinical trial on 200 subjectsPartly delivered143 randomised, 110 completed; published December 2025; nocturia not significant.
4. Patent on the new formulaDeliveredPCT filed 2020; US 11,850,257 granted December 2023.
5. EFSA health claimsNot achievedNo EFSA opinion or authorised claim for Angelica archangelica could be found.
6. Mass expansion in Europe and North America from 2021, 21 jobsNot verifiedNo sales, staff or new market figures are public.

What Happened to the Business

Before the grant, SagaNatura was itself the product of a merger. It was registered in 2014 as KeyNatura, which grew astaxanthin-rich microalgae in tanks in Hafnarfjörður, and took over the business of SagaMedica, whose register entry shows it was deregistered on 5 October 2018, according to Skatturinn. Managing director Sjöfn Sigurgísladóttir said the talks between the two companies began at Eyrir Sprotar, a fund that had invested in both, in an interview the company republished in December 2019; that interview places the merger in "last summer", which does not match the 2018 deregistration date in the register. The company's own history says KeyNatura was formed in 2014 and the company is now called SagaNatura.

In June 2022 SagaNatura said SagaPro was sold over the counter in five countries, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, and that the Madrid trial results were "still unpublished", according to its news page. In the United States, SagaPro is sold under the Terry Naturally brand of EuroPharma in 100 mg capsules of Icelandic angelica leaf extract, according to Swanson Vitamins. The English company website has posted no news since December 2022.

SagaNatura's other patent filings cover the microalgae culture tank (2019) and a combination of astaxanthin and ceramide for the skin condition keratosis pilaris (2022), according to IPqwery. Neither SagaNatura nor Florealis appears in the EIC Fund portfolio, checked on 7 October 2026; the 2019 award was a grant only, with no equity.

Why It Matters for Europe

SagaNatura's earlier Phase 1 grant was funded under the EU's bioeconomy and SME support lines, according to CORDIS. The NO-GO case touches two European interests: products from wild-harvested and cultivated northern plants, and an ageing population in which overactive bladder becomes more common. It also shows a limit of grant-funded supplement science. Under Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006, claims on food must be clear, accurate and based on scientific evidence. The NO-GO project set out to prepare an EFSA health claim; no claim based on the trial has been published, and the trial's nocturia result fell short of significance.

The Verdict

This article is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout. SagaNatura, Florealis and the EIC were not asked for comment.