Smarterials: 7 Years After Its EIC Accelerator Grant, No Glove Yet

Surgeons who want to be safe from a needle through the glove wear two pairs, one over the other. Smarterials Technology, a Berlin start-up founded at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, wanted to fold both pairs into one glove that also shows the wearer where it has been pierced. On 5 June 2019 the European Commission picked it as the sole beneficiary of the SafeGlov project in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, according to the Commission's list of selected companies. The grant, €1,850,060 towards a €2,655,800 project, ran from 1 December 2019 to 31 May 2023, according to CORDIS.

The development work was finished. The final report says Smarterials transferred its technology to "a major glove production company" and ran batch production in Malaysia. What has not happened, more than seven years after the cut-off, is a product launch. A CORDIS article from 2023 gave 2025 as the expected launch year, after medical device certification. No certification, launch or sale has been announced, and the company's public record goes quiet after October 2024.

Where Smarterials Stands Now

Smarterials Technology GmbH is still registered as an active company, with no insolvency or liquidation entry, according to online-handelsregister.de and North Data. The register shows a change of address to Warschauer Platz 11-13 in Berlin-Friedrichshain on 9 August 2024; before that the company sat in the Adlershof technology park, where its company directory page no longer loads. North Data's last publication for the company is the grant of its European patent on 2 October 2024. No register entry, press release or news report has appeared since then. Annual accounts could not be checked: a search of the Bundesanzeiger returned no published accounts under the company's name, and North Data shows no financial figures.

The company's website, smarterials.berlin, now redirects to a static copy of an older site, last modified on 29 August 2024 according to the server. It still says Smarterials "will bring" its gloves to market and names no product for sale, no certification and no distributor. The project site, safeglov.com, was last changed in May 2023 and gives the grant agreement as "No 880428", one digit off the number CORDIS records, 880328. High-Tech Gründerfonds still lists Smarterials in its portfolio, as "a young MedTech company".

With no public activity for two years, the company counts as dormant on this site's definitions. That is not the same as closed: the register shows no step towards dissolution.

The Technology: Two Gloves in One

Double gloving is common in surgery because a single latex glove is easily pierced by a needle or a bone fragment, often without the surgeon noticing. Wearing two pairs adds a second barrier but costs touch sensitivity and doubles the material. Indicator systems already exist: Mölnlycke Health Care introduced its puncture indicator technology, a two-glove set that makes a hole in the outer glove visible, in 1993. A systematic review published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine in November 2025 found that such indicator systems detected perforations two to six times more often than standard double gloves of the same colour.

Smarterials builds the two barriers into one glove. Its granted patent, EP 3 573 807 B1, describes an outer and an inner latex layer separated by a layer of chemically functionalised silica particles no larger than 100 micrometres. When the outer layer is breached, moisture is drawn into the particle layer by capillary action, the two layers stick together at that point and the colour of the inner layer shows through. The patent names Nikolaus Mirtschin, Martin Bothe and Larisa Schmidt as inventors and was first published in December 2019 on a filing from January 2018. The company's claims are a single glove that is quicker to put on, more sensitive than two pairs and cheaper to make on existing dipping lines; no independent clinical comparison with existing indicator systems has been published.

What SafeGlov Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The SafeGlov objective was to adapt production processes at glove manufacturers, demonstrate the glove in surgery and other core uses, and prepare market entry, so that the technology would become "the new protection standard in healthcare". The proposal put the surgical glove market at more than €1.4 billion and promised a "significant increase in turnover far beyond € 100 million". It followed a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study, Composite Gloves, which ran from September 2018 to February 2019. CORDIS lists no other EU projects for the company.

The final periodic report, covering December 2021 to May 2023, says Smarterials optimised its particle suspension with chemical suppliers, built a robotic dip-coating line for lab production, and worked with "a Malaysian company and university" on batch production and on feasibility on a continuous chain line. It reports user studies, patent applications obtained in Japan, Australia and Brazil, and negotiations with partners "in Germany, Europe and internationally" over modified production lines. It ends by saying the company was "in the process of selecting the most suitable path" to commercialise and that the product "will soon be launched". Neither the Malaysian partner nor the glove company that took on the technology is named.

1. Adapt production at glove manufacturersDeliveredBatch and continuous-line production with a Malaysian partner, per the CORDIS report; partner not named.
2. Demonstrate the glove with usersPartlyUser studies reported on CORDIS; no results or clinical study published.
3. Protect the technologyDeliveredEuropean patent granted 2 October 2024, per the EPO.
4. Medical device certificationNot shown"In the process" in 2023; no certificate announced.
5. Market launch, expected 2025Not achievedNo launch, sale or distributor announced by October 2026.

CORDIS records the project as closed, and its final report covers the third reporting period up to the planned end date. The technical half of the plan is credible on the record. The commercial half, a certified product on the surgical glove market, is not there.

The Money

Smarterials has raised far less private money than the EU put in. In September 2021 it closed a second seed round of "nearly €1 million" led by High-Tech Gründerfonds, with its pre-seed investors Think.Health Ventures and Emanet, according to HTGF and Berlin's Health Capital cluster. HTGF's Fabian Mohr said "the perspective to address a mass market rather quickly" had convinced the fund. The commercial register shows the matching capital increase to €36,783 on 7 September 2021, and North Data lists three new shareholder lists filed between January and February 2023, whose contents are behind its paywall. No later financing round has been announced.

Smarterials is not in the EIC Fund portfolio: none of the 16 pages of the official list names it, which fits a grant-only award from 2019. Revenue, losses and staff numbers are not public.

Why Europe Should Care

The project fits an EU rule that is now 16 years old. Council Directive 2010/32/EU of 10 May 2010 obliges hospitals to assess and prevent injuries from needles and other sharps, and the SafeGlov proposal cited it directly. The COVID-19 pandemic added a supply argument: the CORDIS article recalls that hospitals bought uncertified protective equipment when stocks ran out. Most of the world's rubber gloves come from Malaysia, which made 63% of them in 2016, according to ASEAN Briefing. Smarterials' own production trials also took place there, so the project did not shift glove making to Europe; its European value would lie in the design and the patent.

The Verdict

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