ViroGates Promised the EIC Accelerator COVID Triage: The Record

In the spring of 2020 hospitals needed a fast way to decide which COVID-19 patients could safely go home and which were about to get much worse. ViroGates, a small Danish diagnostics company listed on Nasdaq First North in Copenhagen, said it had one: a blood test for suPAR, a protein whose level reflects how activated the immune system is. The European Commission named the company among the winners of the March 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, with a grant only, in its list of selected companies. ViroGates is the only beneficiary of the project on that list and on CORDIS, which records an EU contribution of €884,990 towards a total cost of €1,470,057 for RISCinCOVID, run from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2022.

The project promised three things: to identify patients who could cope with the infection at home, to spot high-risk patients early, and to select those who might benefit from therapy. It also promised to "transfer manufacturing, upscale and implement the suPARnostic technology across hospitals in Europe". Six years later the scientific part has a clear legacy. The commercial part does not: ViroGates' revenue in 2025 was about half its 2022 level, and it now sells its test mainly to longevity clinics and a US partner.

Where ViroGates Stands Now

ViroGates is operating and still listed. Its half-year report for 2026, published on 20 August 2026, shows revenue of DKK 5.1 million for the first six months, up from DKK 1.9 million, an operating loss of DKK 3.9 million and cash of DKK 17.6 million. The company is open about what drove the jump: "the increase largely reflects our U.S. partner taking delivery of the minimum order under our distribution agreement, and not yet a broad-based rollout in the U.S. market", chief executive Jakob Knudsen wrote. On 13 August 2026 it raised its 2026 revenue guidance to DKK 6.5 to 8 million, from DKK 6 to 7 million, and kept its expected operating loss at DKK 10 to 12 million.

The customer the test was funded for has largely gone. In its 2023 annual report ViroGates said revenue had fallen 45% to DKK 5.6 million because COVID-19 patient management "disappeared alongside the pandemic" and the move into general emergency triage was difficult. It turned to preventive health and longevity clinics, where suPAR is sold as a marker of chronic inflammation, as its website now describes it. At the end of June 2026 the company counted 20 recurring customers across clinical routine use and research, against 19 a year earlier.

Control has shifted towards the United States. In October 2024 ViroGates signed an exclusive US distribution agreement with suPAR Health LLC, now trading as suPARbio. In October 2025 suPAR Remedy, LLC, a sister company of that distributor already holding 28.2% of the shares, made a tender offer at DKK 13.58 per share, a 40% premium, and said it did not intend to delist the company. It received acceptances for 6.31% of the shares and ended with 34.54%, according to its result announcement; the offer was settled and completed by 20 November 2025. Days later ViroGates raised about DKK 19.3 million from three Danish shareholders, N. P. Louis-Hansen ApS, Ginnerup Capital ApS and Aetas Healthcare ApS, in a directed issue settled on 28 November 2025.

The Technology: One Number for Immune Activation

suPAR, the soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor, is described by ViroGates on its website as a marker of chronic inflammation, with higher levels linked to a greater risk of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and organ failure. The CORDIS summary calls it a strong predictor of death within 30 days. The company's pitch is a single, non-specific number that tells a clinician whether a patient is likely to deteriorate. It sells the measurement in three forms: TurbiLatex, a reagent for the large automated analysers in hospital labs, first launched in August 2018 for a Roche analyser; an ELISA kit for research; and Quick Triage, a rapid test that gives a result in 20 minutes. A fingerprick version, POC+, built with GENSPEED Biotech, is still in testing and validation, according to the H1 2026 report.

The weakness of a non-specific marker is also its selling point: a high suPAR says that something is wrong, not what. That is why the most durable use the company has found is not triage on its own but selection of patients for a specific drug.

What RISCinCOVID Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The final report on CORDIS lists four work packages. At Hvidovre Hospital, a subcontractor, suPAR was measured in acute patients and 6,500 people with COVID-19 symptoms were entered into a research database, of whom more than 2,000 tested positive. The result was a guideline: patients with suPAR below 4 ng/ml are supportive of discharge, those above 6 ng/ml need increased attention and treatment. A second package ran ESCAPE, an open-label trial of personalised immunotherapy in critically ill patients, published in the Journal of Innate Immunity in 2022. It screened 102 patients; the primary endpoint was met in 58.3% of those given anakinra and 33.3% of those given tocilizumab.

The report claims more than the trial itself showed. It says ESCAPE's findings fed into the design of SAVE-MORE, a randomised phase 3 trial of suPAR-guided anakinra, which led to the European approval. That approval is real: on 17 December 2021 the European Commission extended the label of Sobi's Kineret to adults with COVID-19 pneumonia who need supplemental oxygen and have a suPAR level of at least 6 ng/ml, after a 606-patient trial, according to the European Medicines Agency. Sobi's own release on the later US emergency authorisation names SAVE-MORE, published in Nature Medicine on 3 September 2021, as the basis. Neither source attributes SAVE-MORE to the EIC project; the link between the two rests on ViroGates' report.

The fourth package moved production of a turbidimetric suPAR reagent, based on technology from Japan, to a Polish manufacturer, Nutopi, after more than 200 recipes were tested; the report says this led to CE-IVD accreditation. ViroGates has not announced this transfer in any of the company announcements reviewed for this article, so it rests on the CORDIS report alone. The report also says more than 20 European hospitals were using suPAR-guided anakinra. That number could not be checked, and the 2023 annual report shows those COVID customers did not stay.

1. Discharge and risk guidelineDeliveredThresholds of 4 and 6 ng/ml set from 6,500 patients, per the CORDIS report.
2. Select high-risk patients for therapyDeliveredESCAPE published 2022; EU Kineret label uses suPAR of 6 ng/ml or more since December 2021.
3. Transfer and upscale manufacturingCompany claimPolish production and CE-IVD stated only in the CORDIS report.
4. Implement suPAR across European hospitalsNot achievedCOVID customers lost by 2023; 20 recurring customers in total in mid-2026.

What ViroGates Has Achieved Since the Award

The clearest gain is a regulatory route into the United States, built on the drug label the project helped prepare. In November 2022 the US Food and Drug Administration authorised Kineret for emergency use in hospitalised COVID-19 patients "likely to have an elevated" suPAR, Sobi announced. In June 2023 Sobi signed an agreement with ViroGates to develop the suPAR test for commercial use in the US alongside Kineret, amended in March 2025 to also cover compliance with the EU's new diagnostics regulation; Sobi can recover its development costs through a royalty on US and EU sales. On 8 April 2026 ViroGates submitted a De Novo request to the FDA for suPARnostic TurbiLatex, including SAVE-MORE data. The company expects the FDA to ask for more data and no revenue from this in 2026.

The money has not followed. Revenue rose through the pandemic to DKK 10.2 million in 2022 and fell back to DKK 5.3 million in 2025, while the company lost between DKK 9.6 million and DKK 18.8 million every year from 2019 to 2025, according to its 2021, 2023 and 2025 annual report announcements and the accounts filed with the Danish Business Authority. The 2020 annual report counted the EU grant at DKK 6.6 million.

The team shrank with the business. The filed accounts show an average of 13 employees in 2021, 9 in 2022 and 10 in 2023 and 2024; the H1 2026 report gives 7 for 2025. For 2020 the filings disagree with each other: the 2020 accounts report 11 employees, the 2021 accounts restate the same year as 14.

The Money

ViroGates has been financed by its shareholders, not by venture rounds. It raised DKK 75.0 million at DKK 91 per share in its June 2018 listing. In December 2023 it issued 3,097,047 new shares at DKK 4.5 each for about DKK 13.9 million, and in November 2025 it raised DKK 19.3 million more. At the end of June 2026 equity stood at DKK 16.2 million, with DKK 3.9 million of loans from EIFO, and the shares closed at DKK 10.90.

Why Europe Should Care

RISCinCOVID was funded to save hospital beds in a pandemic, and in September 2021 the Commission set up HERA, its health emergency authority, to "prevent, detect and rapidly respond to health emergencies", as SwissCore summarised it. A European-made triage test that can decide who needs a bed is exactly the kind of tool that agenda wants on the shelf. ViroGates' story also shows the cost of Europe's new rules for diagnostics: the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation has applied since 26 May 2022, and tests that were self-certified under the old directive may stay on the market under transitional rules only until the end of 2028 or 2029, depending on their class, according to the Johner Institute. ViroGates said in August 2026 that higher IVDR compliance costs and staff changes would offset most of the extra contribution from its higher revenue guidance.

The Verdict

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