Ophiomics is the first Portuguese enterprise to sign a contract with the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund from Horizon Europe. In Portugal, ANI, under the PERIN network, supports the EIC calls, helping the SME with deep tech businesses that need funding in order to scale-up.
The 1 million euro investment landed by Ophiomics, an I&D company in Artificial Intelligence and Genomics, will finance the normative and clinical validation of the HepatoPredict project and its conclusion, in order to launch it in the market next year. The technologies developed by Ophiomics will allow fewer lives to be lost to liver cancer, contributing to its early detection, to selecting the treatment best suited to each patient and to reducing the compatibility error in hepatic transplants.
“This funding is another step in making HepatoPredict a global success, allowing us to potentially save thousands of lives by selecting the right liver cancer patients for liver transplantation and resection. It will further support the continued development of our portfolio of products towards a series A round sometime within the next 24 months “ says José Leal, CEO of Ophiomics.
With a budget of 10 thousand million euros for 2021-2027, the EIC is based on what is defined as blended funding, which includes grants and equity and aims to support top innovators, entrepreneurs, small enterprises and scientists with brilliant, disruptive ideas and ambitions to scale-up their business to a global level. For Portugal, the EIC represents an opportunity to retain nationally originated deep tech businesses, to attract talent and qualified labour and to increase the exposure of tech-based SME and start-ups, as well as of the entire national ecosystem, in more competitive international systems.
The EIC fund was launched in 2020 and invests in the capital of the companies selected under Accelerator, an extremely competitive European instrument under which four Portuguese companies received funding: Ophiomics, AddVolt, S.A., SMARTEX e Ecofoot, S.A.
“This is an important accomplishment because it opens a financing line for Portuguese companies that is, amongst European instruments, the one which supports the most disruptive innovation which doesn’t, at times, have as much funding from venture capitals. Furthermore, it is an important highlight of the quality of the innovation developed in Portugal”, according to João Borga, ANI Administrator.
The EIC has, at the moment, two open calls: for Accelerator, which is always open for applications, and for Pathfinder, for which the second calls ends on October 27th. All of those interested in this instrument may have the support of ANI’s National Contact Points under the Horizon Europe team, within the PERIN (Portuguese in Europe Research and Innovation Network).
