How Xsensio Spent Its EIC Accelerator Grant on Skin Biosensors

Xsensio, a 2014 spin-off of the Nanolab at EPFL in Lausanne, promised in 2020 to read inflammation markers continuously through the skin, so that doctors could spot the sudden spikes that precede organ failure in COVID-19 or cancer patients. The European Commission selected its CytoTrack project in the 20 March 2020 round of COVID-19-related projects of the EIC Accelerator pilot, with Xsensio as the only company named for the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,756,693.75 towards a total cost of €2,509,562.50, for a project that ran from 1 October 2020 to 31 March 2024. The company announced the award in September 2020 as "€1.7M support from the EIC Accelerator".

Six years later the company is still developing. It has an ISO 13485 quality certificate, data from healthy volunteers, two papers on detecting C-reactive protein (CRP), and money from the EIC Fund and a US-led Series A. What it does not yet have, on the public record, is a result from patients or a product on sale.

Where Xsensio Stands in 2026

Xsensio is active. In March 2026 it said it had closed an oversubscribed $7 million Series A led by the San Francisco firm WI Harper, with Privilège Ventures, the European Innovation Council and private investors in the US, Europe and Asia, as reported by MassDevice and BeBeez. The law firm Walder Wyss, which advised on the deal, and the lead investor WI Harper give the same amount and investors; Moneycab put it at €6 million. The money is for "development and clinical validation" of the platform, and the company's "first product focuses on the early detection of organ dysfunction", MassDevice reported. Alongside the round, Xsensio announced a long-term collaboration with Texas Instruments on CMOS integration, miniaturisation and large-scale manufacturing. Texas Instruments' chief technology officer, Ahmad Bahai, had visited the company in February 2025, according to Xsensio. The terms of the collaboration are not public.

The Swiss commercial register shows the round arriving in steps. In February 2025 shareholders converted CHF 1,133,997.37 of claims into new shares and a director from San Mateo, California, joined the board. In November 2025 a further capital increase lifted share capital to CHF 301,876.36, according to the Zefix entry and its gazette notices, which North Data also lists. Xsensio says TIME named it one of the World's Top HealthTech Companies of 2025; that listing could not be checked on TIME's own site for this article.

The Technology: Blood-Test Markers Read at the Skin

Fitness wearables measure movement and heart rate. Hospitals track inflammation with blood draws taken hours apart. Xsensio's Lab-on-Skin chip sits between the two: it measures biomarkers in interstitial fluid (ISF), the fluid between the cells under the skin, with arrays of semiconductor sensors that each carry a different chemical coating (enzymes, aptamers, antibodies or nanobodies) to pick out one molecule, the CytoTrack final report says. The electronics stay the same while the coating changes, which the company argues makes one chip reusable across many tests. Its technology page lists uses from ICU shock monitoring to inflammation in oncology and surgical recovery. In 2017 it described a 1 cm by 1 cm chip with room for up to 10,000 sensors, according to Startupticker.

The obvious comparison is the continuous glucose monitor, which the CytoTrack report itself cites: glucose patches also read ISF and have made wearing a sensor patch normal for millions of people. Proteins such as CRP are far harder to measure than glucose. A 2024 preprint by Xsensio and EPFL authors, including Ionescu, reports CRP detection in an ISF-like solution down to 0.8 µg/mL, with 5 µL samples and a 100-second response, in the laboratory rather than on a patient, according to arXiv. An earlier peer-reviewed paper in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices (2022) describes label-free CRP sensing with silicon nanowire transistor arrays; both are listed as project outputs on CORDIS.

What CytoTrack Promised, and What the Record Shows

The proposal summary on CORDIS described a team of 7 PhDs, engineers and business people, a 2018 two-year agreement with "a top 10 biopharma company" for its oncology pipeline, and a plan to build "game-changing complementary diagnostic monitoring for the pharma industry" to predict drug response and toxicity. It said EIC money was "critical" because raising funds had "proven to be challenging in the absence of preclinical data", and that "Xsensio welcomes blended finance from the EC". The target patients were people at risk of sudden inflammation when infected with viruses such as COVID-19 or during strong cancer treatment.

The final periodic report, covering October 2022 to March 2024, is more modest. Xsensio built a proprietary biofluid collector under a quality management system, obtained ISO 13485 certificate Q5 119322 001 from TÜV SÜD in 2024, and gathered data on "a novel biofluid composition" from healthy volunteers under ethics approval HREC 038-2023. It reports detecting lactate and CRP. It does not report any study in COVID-19 or cancer patients, and no pharma customer for the monitoring is named in the report or in the company announcements found for this article. The patient step was pushed past the project: the report says Xsensio secured Innosuisse funding for a 2025 observational study (111.128 IP-LS) in 140 shock and pre-shock patients in the intensive care unit of the CHUV, the Lausanne university hospital. No result, registration or start announcement for that study could be found; a search of ClinicalTrials.gov returns no study naming Xsensio.

1. Inflammation markers sensed by the platformDeliveredCRP and lactate detection reported; two CRP papers on CORDIS.
2. Medical-grade quality systemDeliveredISO 13485 from TÜV SÜD in 2024, per the final report.
3. Validation of the wearable on peoplePartlyHealthy volunteers only; no published data.
4. Monitoring of at-risk COVID-19 and cancer patientsNot achievedNo patient study reported; the CHUV ICU study has no public result.
5. Complementary diagnostic for pharma drug trialsNot achievedNo pharma customer named in the final report or later news.
6. Equity alongside the grantDeliveredEIC Fund in the December 2021 round.

The Money Since the Award

The blended-finance part of the award did turn into an investment. In December 2021 Xsensio announced a CHF 4.2 million first close of a new round led by Privilège Ventures, "with the EIC Fund and other international investors", to fund product development, clinical validation and a market launch through partnerships in Europe and the US, according to Startupticker and BioAlps. Xsensio is listed on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, with a portfolio page under the CytoTrack project title. Neither the amount nor the date of the EIC Fund's investment is published. The register shows the matching step: in December 2021 shareholders approved a capital increase that included the conversion of CHF 2,043,559.61 of claims into shares, and Jacqueline Ruedin Rüsch of Privilège Ventures became board chair, per the gazette notices on Zefix.

In February 2023 Xsensio signed a know-how and stock purchase agreement with Mayo Clinic to develop wearable products for critical care; Mayo Clinic "has a financial interest in the technology", Venturelab reported, and BioAlps carried the same announcement. No amount was disclosed. Before CytoTrack, Xsensio held one smaller EU grant: the Lab-on-Skin feasibility study under SME Instrument Phase 1, with €50,000 from May to October 2018.

Revenue, losses and headcount cannot be checked. Xsensio's accounts are not public, and its register entries on Zefix show only capital, statutes, auditors and officers. The company's team page names its managers but gives no headcount; in 2017 it was a team of six, according to Startupticker.

Why It Matters for Europe

Xsensio is a Swiss company backed with EU grant and equity money. Switzerland signed its association to Horizon Europe on 10 November 2025, applying retroactively from 1 January 2025, with Swiss entities eligible for calls from the 2025 budget onwards, according to the European Commission and Euresearch. CytoTrack was funded under Horizon 2020, and the EIC Fund still lists the company. The EIC has also put Xsensio in front of Philips at an EIC Corporate Day in 2025. The scale-up path the company has chosen runs through US partners: a San Francisco lead investor, Mayo Clinic, and Texas Instruments for chip manufacturing. If the device reaches hospitals, the clinical know-how would be European while the industrial partners named so far are American.

The Verdict

Xsensio and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.