ArgusEye, an EIC Accelerator Winner, Tracks Antibodies In-Line

Antibody drugs are still made one step at a time: a batch is grown, purified and filtered, and between the steps samples go to a laboratory to check how much product is there and what state it is in. ArgusEye, a 2017 company from Linköping, Sweden, sells sensors that take that reading inside the process line instead, using gold nanoparticles whose optical response shifts when antibodies bind to them. The EIC Accelerator selected the company at its October 2025 cut-off for blended finance, and CORDIS records a grant of €2,499,975.63 for a project running from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028.

The project is five months old. What can be checked already is the company behind it: two products on sale, a technology described in a peer-reviewed paper, a new chief executive, a fresh venture round, and filed accounts that show a loss of nearly SEK 20 million in 2025 against SEK 2.3 million of sales.

Gold nanoparticles in a fibre-optic probe

The technology is localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). Gold nanoparticles on a sensor chip absorb light at a wavelength that shifts when molecules bind to their surface; coat the chip with Protein A, G or L, which grab antibodies, and the shift becomes a measure of how much antibody is flowing past. The company's site lists chips for whole antibodies and for fragments such as Fabs and domain antibodies, and a 2020 paper in Processes, co-authored by Martinsson and Aili, describes the fibre-optic sensor. The authors report accuracy comparable to Protein G HPLC and good correlation with ELISA on unpurified samples from Chinese hamster ovary cell cultures.

The established alternatives are offline or at-line: an HPLC run or an ELISA in a laboratory, with a delay between sample and result. ArgusEye's case, set out in its March 2024 launch of AugaOne, is that a reading taken in the line, without sample pretreatment, lets a purification step react as it runs, for example by spotting the moment antibody starts to break through a chromatography column or by steering a multi-column setup. The company says the sensor is unaffected by matrix effects, cells and temperature; no independent test of that claim was found.

Two products, one named partner

AugaOne, the in-line system, was introduced in March 2024. AugaSampler, an automated liquid handler with aseptic sampling for on-line and at-line measurements, was launched on 29 April 2026 at BioProcess International Europe in Vienna, after an introductory webinar in February. The launch release gives no technical specifications.

On customers the record consists of company statements. A May 2024 funding release, carried by the Finnish Venture Capital Association and News-Medical, said the company had formed a "breakthrough partnership" with Bayer in 2021 and had validated its technology with several international customers. The company's review of 2025 speaks of commercial collaborations with top biopharma companies, and LEAD, the Linköping incubator, wrote in April 2026 that it works with several leading global pharmaceutical companies. None of these sources names a customer other than Bayer, and none describes the scope or terms of the Bayer work.

One public record speaks to the limits of the technology. Sweden's innovation agency Vinnova paid SEK 1,120,000 for SMF AdBIOPRO, a project ArgusEye coordinated from November 2023 to December 2025 to find low-affinity antibody ligands. Its results page states: "The project did not fully achieve the main objective of continuous in-process measurement without regeneration." It adds that the dynamic measurement range for IgG detection was significantly expanded.

What the EIC project promises

The CORDIS objective frames the project around European biologics supply. It says biologics account for 60% of all drug shortages in Europe, that they cost about ten times more to manufacture than conventional drugs, and that stepwise production with offline laboratory checks slows development and automation. The project's answer is in-line monitoring of critical process parameters and quality attributes across the whole process chain. With EIC support, the objective says, ArgusEye aims to adapt its technology, build facilities for LSPR sensor chip manufacturing and expand into new markets. CORDIS lists no total project cost, and the project, signed on 29 May 2026, has no periodic report yet.

1. In-line sensor for downstream processingOn saleAugaOne, launched in March 2024, before the grant (News-Medical).
2. Monitoring across the whole bioprocess chainSecond product outAugaSampler adds on-line and at-line sampling (April 2026); upstream and formulation coverage not yet shown.
3. Continuous measurement without regenerationNot shownVinnova project ended December 2025 without fully achieving it.
4. Sensor chip manufacturing facilityNot yet reportedNo announcement found on the company news pages checked on 4 November 2026.
5. Market expansionToo earlyNo customer named in any release since the award.

The money: grants, three rounds and widening losses

ArgusEye announced on 18 February 2026 that it had been awarded €6.25 million of EIC blended finance, €2.5 million as grant and up to €3.75 million as equity, as one of 61 companies in the round; LEAD reported the same split and counted it among six Swedish companies selected. CORDIS records the grant. No EIC Fund investment in ArgusEye has been announced, so the equity part is, on the public record, a commitment of up to €3.75 million rather than an investment made.

The venture money is better documented. A round of SEK 32.5 million, about €2.8 million, closed in May 2024, led by Voima Ventures and co-led by Eir Ventures, and the company put its total raised at €3.45 million at that point. On 24 April 2026 it announced a further €3.3 million from Voima, Eir and the new investor Impilo Partners Invest, which LEAD also reported. Vinnova grants of SEK 500,000 for market analysis in 2018 and 2019 and SEK 1.12 million for AdBIOPRO came earlier. These amounts come from different sources and are not added up here.

The filed accounts, as summarised by hitta.se from Dun & Bradstreet data, show the cost of building the business. Revenue was SEK 4.6 million in 2023, SEK 2.1 million in 2024 and SEK 2.3 million in 2025. The net result went from a loss of SEK 2.6 million to SEK 13.1 million and then SEK 20.0 million. Equity stood at SEK 22.5 million at the end of 2024, after the 2024 round, and at SEK 2.8 million at the end of 2025. The April 2026 round and the EIC grant both came after that balance sheet date. A second register summary gives the same organisation number, revenue of SEK 1 to 5 million and 10 to 19 employees.

Staff rose from 3 in 2023 to 6 in 2024 and 11 in 2025, per the accounts summary. The company's own review of 2025 gives a different growth figure, a 56% rise in headcount, without an absolute number. The register summary and the company website also give different street addresses in Linköping, Spannmålsgatan 55 and Fridtunagatan 24.

A new chief executive from industry

On 14 April 2026 the company named Sofia Håkansson Buch chief executive, with a background in biologics and cell therapy process development, manufacturing and commercialisation; Martinsson moved to chief technology officer. The register summary lists her as external managing director, with Torben Jørgensen as chair and Aili among the board members. The company also reports a Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research industrial doctorate grant with KTH in late 2025 and a collaboration with Lund University on multi-column chromatography control.

Why the EU is interested

The Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe, adopted in November 2020, sets out to address medicine shortages, secure supply chains and reduce the EU's dependence on non-EU countries for medicines. The CORDIS objective places ArgusEye inside that agenda: cheaper and faster biologics production in Europe, through continuous manufacturing that in-line analytics make possible. That is the project's claim, and no CORDIS report yet measures it.

ArgusEye was not asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.