Smart Immune and the EIC Accelerator: €17.5M Promised, Liquidated

Smart Immune, founded in Paris in 2017, developed ProTcell, a therapy that grows T-cell precursors from donor cells in seven days and lets the patient's own thymus turn them into working immune cells, to rebuild immunity after stem cell transplants for leukaemia and inherited immune diseases. In March 2023 it announced that the EIC had selected it for €17.5 million: a €2.5 million grant for its Phase I/II trials and an equity commitment of up to €15 million, making it "the only French company to receive an equity commitment and a grant" in that round, according to its press release. The grant project, Smart ProTcell, was to run from June 2023 to November 2025 with an EU contribution of €2.50 million, according to CORDIS.

The company did not last that long. A Paris court opened receivership proceedings on 6 March 2025, setting the date it stopped paying its debts at 24 December 2024, and on 30 June 2025 converted them into judicial liquidation and approved a sale plan, according to notices in the BODACC, France's official register of company notices. In July 2025 a French subsidiary of MeiraGTx, a US gene therapy company, acquired "a majority of Smart Immune's assets and operations, including twenty of its employees" for a purchase price of €250,000 plus a €100,000 transfer fee, MeiraGTx told the US Securities and Exchange Commission in its quarterly report.

Where Smart Immune Stands Now

Smart Immune SAS is in liquidation, with Selarl Athena appointed as liquidator. Its website did not load when checked in September 2026. MeiraGTx plans to use ProTcell to develop off-the-shelf CAR-T therapies controlled by its own riboswitch technology, and says ProTcell "has shown proof of concept in 20 patients treated in 3 clinical studies", according to its 2025 annual report. It booked $0.6 million of acquired research and development expense for the deal.

The Technology: Borrowing the Thymus

Donor stem cell transplants are "costly, hard-to-access & linked to many severe complications", the company's CORDIS summary says. ProTcell supplies ready-made T-cell precursors that mature in the patient's own thymus, which the company said makes them tolerant of the patient's body. Its lead product SMART101 was in two Phase I/II trials planned to enrol 36 and 40 patients, according to ClinicalTrials.gov; neither registry record has posted results, and neither has been updated since 2023.

What the EIC Award Promised, and What the Record Shows

The grant was to support the Phase I/II trials and, in the company's CORDIS summary, to pursue severe combined immunodeficiency, an indication it called "less attractive-to-VCs", while projecting it would "treat >40k patients by 2030". The company went into receivership five months before the project's scheduled end and no final report has been published.

1. Phase I/II trialsUnverifiedNo results posted.
2. Company solvencyMissedPayments stopped December 2024.
3. Project completionMissedLiquidated June 2025.
4. Technology survivesPartialNow owned by MeiraGTx.

The Money

Smart Immune had no revenue and lost €9.18 million in 2023, according to the French company register data published by recherche-entreprises. Whether the EIC Fund invested any of its €15 million commitment, and how much of the €2.5 million grant was paid out before the collapse, are not public.

What Cannot Be Checked

Why Europe Should Care

The EIC singled out Smart Immune as one of 17 companies worth both a grant and equity. Just over two years later its technology, which the EIC had selected for funding, passed to a US-listed company for €250,000 through a court sale. The EIC's equity promise did not keep the company alive.

The Verdict

Smart Immune's liquidator, MeiraGTx and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.