EBAMed: The EIC Accelerator Heart Tracker That Awaits Patients

Proton beams can destroy a small patch of tissue deep inside the body without a scalpel or a catheter. Aiming them at the heart is the hard part, because the target moves with every beat and every breath. EBAMed, a Geneva company founded in 2018 by the CERN-trained accelerator physicist Adriano Garonna, builds CardioKit, an ultrasound system that watches the heart in real time and tells the proton machine when to fire. In January 2020 the European Innovation Council selected the project, then called Cardio-kit, with blended finance. The EU contributed €2,405,025 to a €4,032,025 project whose stated aim was to optimise the hardware and software and "perform all the clinical validation activities necessary to obtain CE Mark and start commercialization in Europe".

The project ended on 31 August 2023. Three years later, EBAMed's own website describes CardioKit as "an investigational device: not CE-marked, not FDA-cleared, not for sale", and names first-in-human trials as "the next milestone". The company is active, well funded by the standards of a Swiss medtech start-up, and publishing. It has not yet treated a patient with its system.

Where EBAMed Stands Now

EBAMed SA is an existing company in the Swiss commercial register, and its board has been busy. In May 2026 Rupa Basu, a US medtech executive, replaced Michael Cogswell as chair. On 8 October 2026 the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce published that Marina Izzo, chief executive since February 2021, is no longer a director. The company's team page now names Marcin Gołębicki, a former Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific and Abbott manager, as chief executive and describes Izzo as "CEO of EBAMed from 2021 to 2026", while still listing her on the board. No public announcement of the change was found.

The money kept coming in after the EIC grant ended. In June 2023 EBAMed announced a €14.35 million Series A led by the Milan venture firm Panakès Partners, with the EIC Fund, EFI Lake Geneva Ventures, LIFTT Venture Capital Italia, OCCIDENT and existing investor Mayo Clinic, to take CardioKit "up to the completion of its First in Human trials". In January 2025 CDP Venture Capital added €1.6 million, bringing the round to €16 million, according to GGBA and BioAlps. The register shows a further, larger issue of 1,174,853 preferred shares published in July 2025, paid mostly in cash; its price and investors are not public.

The Technology: Firing Only When the Heart Is in Place

Ventricular tachycardia, a fast and potentially fatal rhythm of the heart's lower chambers, is usually treated with drugs, an implanted defibrillator or catheter ablation, in which a cardiologist threads catheters into the heart to burn the faulty tissue. EBAMed's CORDIS report argues that catheter ablation is invasive, requires at least two days in hospital and works in only half of cases. Those figures are the company's, not independent data.

Stereotactic arrhythmia radioablation (STAR) does the same job from outside the body with radiation, and is described in the peer-reviewed literature as "an emerging, non-invasive treatment for refractory ventricular arrhythmias" that "requires target motion management", according to a 2025 study in the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics. In December 2019 the Italian hadron therapy centre CNAO treated a cardiac arrhythmia patient with protons, as the CERN Courier reported. EBAMed's pitch, on its website, is that treatment rooms already manage motion but track surrogates rather than the heart, and that CardioKit looks at the heart itself.

CardioKit holds an ultrasound probe on the patient's chest. A deep learning algorithm tracks the target in the images, and a beam controller opens a "gate" only when both the heartbeat and the breathing cycle bring the target to its planned position, and holds the beam when tracking confidence drops. The company says the ultrasound tracking provides 3D motion information at 40 Hz with millimetre accuracy. Its website now pitches the system for all radiotherapy rooms, not only proton centres, and adds a second use: protecting the heart while tumours in the lung, oesophagus or breast are irradiated.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

EBAMed came to the EIC Accelerator through the usual Horizon 2020 route. A €50,000 Phase 1 grant funded a four-month feasibility study from August to November 2019, whose report set out the plan: optimise the system, set up an assembly line and validate safety and effectiveness in a clinical study with European hospitals, laying "the ground for CE Mark approval". The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 8 January 2020 cut-off names EBAMED SA of Geneva for Cardio-kit with blended finance, as the only beneficiary of the project.

The grant agreement was signed on 9 June 2020 and the project ran from 1 July 2020 to 31 August 2023, according to CORDIS, which lists the €2,405,025 as the EU contribution and all of it as EBAMed's net EU contribution. The CERN Courier also described it as a "€2.4 million grant from the European Union" to fund product development "and the first human tests". CORDIS does not show the original end date, so whether the project was extended cannot be checked.

The final periodic report, covering January 2022 to August 2023, lists a functional prototype ("CardioKit MVP"), a cardiac deep learning algorithm validated on 350 patient datasets, completed animal testing, "initial testing in humans", a light quality management system and an initial meeting with the US Food and Drug Administration. It states that "CardioKit will obtain FDA Approval and a CE Mark", in the future tense. The human testing it refers to was imaging only. A single-centre study at Policlinico San Matteo in Pavia enrolled 24 patients with ventricular arrhythmias and showed that the automatic probe could acquire usable images in at least one view in all of them; no radiation was delivered. ClinicalTrials.gov dates that study from June 2021 to February 2022 and records it as completed; the company's evidence page lists it under 2023, the year it was registered.

1. Optimise CardioKit hardware and softwareDeliveredPrototype and AI tracking reported on CORDIS and used in published pig studies.
2. Animal validation of gated proton deliveryDeliveredPig studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts General Hospital, published 2024 and 2026.
3. Clinical validation in patientsPartly24-patient imaging study without a beam; first-in-human treatment still ahead in 2026.
4. CE markNot achieved"Not CE-marked", per the company website.
5. Start sales in EuropeNot achieved"Not for sale", per the company website.
6. FDA approvalNot achievedOne initial FDA meeting reported; "not FDA-cleared".

What EBAMed Has Achieved Since the Award

The research output is real and mostly peer reviewed, with EBAMed staff as co-authors. A 2025 paper in Clinical and Translational Radiation Oncology with the University of Pennsylvania reported cardiorespiratory-gated proton irradiation of pigs with the system, with dose delivered "close to or within the expected region". A 2025 planning study with CNAO and San Matteo in Pavia showed in eight patients' data that proton plans could be built around the ultrasound probe without breaking dose constraints. In September 2026 a team at Massachusetts General Hospital and Yale, with Garonna as co-author, published a six-pig study in which dual gating cut the extra target margin for motion to 16% to 23%, against 48% to 72% with breathing-only gating, with two animals in each arm.

On the corporate side, the record is one of steady fundraising and frequent leadership changes. Garonna handed the chief executive role to Marina Izzo in February 2021 and left the board in 2022, according to the register, while staying on as chief technology officer. The company says it holds an ISO 13485 certified quality management system and more than three granted US patents; neither claim was checked against a certificate or patent register for this article.

The Money

EBAMed's annual accounts are not published in the Swiss commercial register or on its website, and no revenue, loss, cash or staff figures could be found. What the register does show is the share structure. EBAMed was registered with 1,000,000 shares of CHF 0.10 and converted its capital to euros in May 2023 at the Series A, when 1,321,615 preferred shares were issued, partly by converting a claim of EUR 1,830,050. By July 2025 it had 4,147,305 shares, of which 2,762,524 are preferred shares carrying priority on dividends and liquidation proceeds, according to Zefix and its gazette entries.

Why Europe Should Care

Cardiovascular disease is Europe's leading cause of death, and in December 2025 the EU adopted a dedicated plan for it, the Safe Hearts Plan, which the European Society of Cardiology says includes a research and innovation roadmap. On the radiation side, the Commission's SAMIRA action plan, adopted in February 2021, aims to facilitate innovation in medical applications of ionising radiation. EBAMed sits where these meet, and its roots are European infrastructure: its founders came out of CERN and the TERA Foundation, whose technology underpins Italy's CNAO and Austria's MedAustron, as the CERN Courier describes. Most of the clinical evidence for the gated beam, though, now comes from US centres in Philadelphia and Boston.

The Verdict

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