Mitra Bio and the EIC Accelerator: A Melanoma Test Goes to Trial

Most skin lesions biopsied on suspicion of melanoma turn out not to be melanoma, according to the company. Mitra Bio, a London company founded in 2020, wants to replace many of those biopsies with a strip of adhesive tape: pressed on the lesion, it lifts skin cells whose DNA methylation, a chemical pattern on the genome that changes in cancer, is then sequenced and scored for melanoma. Its registered trial states that over 90% of suspected skin cancer lesions are not melanoma, and its co-founder Cristiana Banila told Personal Care Insights in July 2025 that "as few as 6% of suspected melanoma biopsies actually turn out to be cancerous".

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, MitraTest, at its March 2025 cut-off as a grant-only award. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,499,000 for 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2027 to validate a test that general practitioners could use and that could be sold as an at-home kit. A year into the grant period, the validation trial is recruiting at hospitals in three countries. The proof-of-concept accuracy that justified it is so far a company figure.

A biopsy replaced by tape

The difficulty is the amount of material. "Traditionally, tape stripping yields tiny amounts of DNA, as little as a few nanograms," Banila told Personal Care Insights, which reports that the company built a workflow for very low DNA input and has since improved its protocol to extract more DNA from thick, keratinised lesions. The method itself is published: a British Journal of Dermatology paper by Mitra Bio staff, first published in November 2023, profiled tape strips from 175 participants with enzymatic conversion and Illumina whole-genome sequencing, and found that the strips' global methylation patterns agreed strongly with those of conventional biopsies in five matched cases. That paper concerns ageing and UV damage, not melanoma.

The melanoma claim rests on a separate study. The Health Research Authority records a favourable ethics opinion on 26 May 2022 for a Mitra Bio-sponsored study comparing tape-stripped suspicious lesions with healthy skin and training a machine-learning classifier on the result. Personal Care Insights reports that a 2023 pilot with Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust enrolled 217 people with lesions suspected to be melanoma. The CORDIS summary reports a proof-of-concept study with Guy's Hospital that showed over 95% specificity and 85% sensitivity against standard biopsy; neither source says whether these describe the same study.

The trial the grant pays for

The CORDIS project and the trial are linked on the record: the study registered on ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT07883954, called MELODI, uses the grant agreement number 101247537 as its organisation study ID and names the European Innovation Council as collaborator. It started on 10 June 2026 and was first posted on 20 October 2026. It is an observational study: patients already booked for a biopsy of a suspicious lesion give tape samples at one visit, and their pathology results become the reference.

The registration lists five sites: the Royal Free and Whittington hospitals in London, Ghent University Hospital, University Hospital Tübingen, all recruiting, and IDIBAPS in Barcelona, not yet recruiting. Personal Care Insights had reported a plan for four hospitals in the UK and the EU. The trial has two parts, a discovery cohort to refine the methylation markers and a validation cohort to measure sensitivity, specificity and predictive values with confidence intervals. Estimated enrolment is 2,000, primary completion is estimated for 10 October 2027, and study completion for 15 November 2027, two weeks after the EIC grant's scheduled end.

1. A multi-centre clinical validationUnder wayMELODI recruiting at four of five listed sites since June 2026, per ClinicalTrials.gov.
2. Accuracy against biopsyNot yet reportedPilot figures are company-reported; the trial's validation results are due after October 2027.
3. A test for GPs and an at-home kitNot shownNo melanoma product appears on the company's homepage or About page, checked 28 October 2026.
4. UK and EU medical device approvalNot shownThe company told Personal Care Insights in July 2025 that it expects approval to be difficult; none has been announced.

A skincare business underneath

Mitra Bio did not start in cancer. In an October 2022 interview with Maddyness, Kaveh, a former L'Oréal researcher, said a large French skincare company gave Mitra Bio a research contract a month after it started, that Avon ran a paid trial, and that the company had raised £1.3 million in total from Entrepreneur First, the Illumina Accelerator, Innovate UK and private investors. The same interview said Banila had worked on a non-invasive cervical cancer test before the two met in 2019.

That consumer line is what the company's website leads with today. mitra.bio, where the old mitrabio.tech address now redirects, offers a waitlist for an at-home skin patch that scores biological skin age, photo damage and wrinkle markers, with a disclaimer that its outputs are not intended to diagnose any disease. Neither the homepage nor the About page mentions melanoma. The About page shows the logos of Illumina, Khosla Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Merian Ventures, the European Innovation Council and Innovate UK under the line "Backed by leaders in genomics and AI, and by skincare veterans"; no announcement of an investment by Khosla Ventures or Merian Ventures could be found. Mitra Bio also holds patent applications on its method, including WO2023037103 with European and US filings, naming Banila and Kaveh as inventors; this research did not establish whether any has been granted.

What the accounts show

Mitra Bio files micro-entity accounts at Companies House, which show a balance sheet and headcount but no revenue or profit figures. The register lists the company as active, with accounts to 30 April 2026 filed on 29 June 2026. Its filing history records a share allotment on 18 December 2024 together with new share classes and new articles. In the financial year that included it, net assets rose from £782,070 to £4,219,581. The amount raised and the names of the new shareholders have not been announced in any source found for this article.

In the year to April 2026, the first in which the EIC project ran, net assets fell to £3,098,791, and the balance sheet shows £483,046 of accruals and deferred income, a line that was empty a year earlier. The average headcount doubled from 6 to 12. The register also shows that Banila's directorship ended on 8 July 2026, followed by a change to share class rights in July and new articles of association adopted in September 2026. The About page, checked on 28 October 2026, lists Kaveh as CEO and founder with three heads of research, product and data; it does not list Banila. Whether Banila remains involved with the company is not public.

A cancer the EU screening rules leave out

The project summary puts melanoma deaths in the EU at about 15,000 a year. The Council recommendation on cancer screening adopted on 9 December 2022 covers breast, cervical and colorectal cancer and adds lung, prostate and gastric cancer, but not skin cancer. In September 2022, ahead of that revision, the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology held a policy roundtable on skin cancer screening and called Europe's Beating Cancer Plan "an important opportunity" for skin cancer prevention. The project pitches its test as a quick, low-cost step for general practitioners before a biopsy; whether it is accurate enough for that role is what the trial has to show. Three of the trial's five sites are in EU member states: Belgium, Germany and Spain.

Mitra Bio has not been asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.