ELEM and the EIC Accelerator: Drug Tests on Virtual Hearts

ELEM Biotech, a 2018 spin-off of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center chaired by Mariano Vázquez, builds V.HEART, a platform that runs clinical trials on populations of simulated human hearts. Its EIC application described "a supercomputer-based platform to perform massive in-silico clinical trials on populations of digital avatars", covering pacing, cardiac pumps and drug cardiac safety, that would reduce animal testing and "taper" human trials, according to CORDIS.

The European Innovation Council granted €2,482,097 towards a €3.55 million project from March 2023 to August 2025. The final report says the first version of V.HEART was deployed on commercial cloud and "is now utilized by customers to study the cardiac safety of their proprietary compounds". It added an AI model to forecast QT prolongation, a heart rhythm risk, across simulated populations, extended the Alya Red simulation engine to diseased hearts and electromechanics, and built a generator of virtual heart shapes. ELEM's annual turnover is between €500,000 and €1 million, according to Empresia.

Where ELEM Stands Now

ELEM now sells two products: V.HEART Trials, to configure and run virtual clinical trials in the cloud, and V.HEART Discovery, to screen drug candidates for QT prolongation. In September 2026 a paper by ELEM authors on predicting drug-induced cardiac risk in vulnerable populations, using 512 virtual subjects, won the Safety Pharmacology Society's 2026 Technological Innovation Publication Award, the company said. The Spanish register shows no capital increase since May 2022, and no equity round or EIC Fund investment has been announced.

The Technology: A Population of Digital Hearts

ELEM generates virtual patients from real medical data, varying heart shape, muscle properties and electrical activation, and simulates how each heart responds to a drug or device on supercomputers. Virtual populations can far exceed the size of traditional trials, and conditions such as heart failure, infarction and bundle branch block can be modelled, the report says. The goal is patient-specific digital twins for precision medicine.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project promised to finalise V.HEART and expand its range of therapies and virtual populations. The report documents a production cloud platform, a stronger simulation engine and several in-silico trials. It names no customers and gives no revenue. Future work, it says, will focus on validation with stakeholders. CORDIS lists the project as closed.

1. Cloud platformDeliveredUsed by customers.
2. AI QT predictorDeliveredIntegrated.
3. Diseased-heart modelsDeliveredSeveral conditions.
4. Commercial scaleUnverifiedSales under €1M.

The Money

ELEM's registered share capital has been €4,757.65 since May 2022. Whether the EIC Fund invested under the blended award, and ELEM's profit or loss, are not public.

What Cannot Be Checked

Why Europe Should Care

Regulators including the FDA and EMA are opening the door to computer-modelled evidence, ELEM says, and virtual trials could reduce animal testing. ELEM carries Barcelona supercomputing research into that market. The EIC funded the product; Empresia puts its annual turnover at €500,000 to €1 million.

The Verdict

ELEM Biotech and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.