Where SOMAprobes' EIC Accelerator COVID Saliva Test Stands Today

SOMAprobes, a small biotech company in San Sebastián, set out to detect infections not by finding a pathogen's genes or proteins but by catching the enzymes it releases at work. In the European Commission's emergency COVID-19 round of March 2020 it won an EIC Accelerator pilot grant for Corona-Quick, a saliva strip test meant to spot a coronavirus enzyme, the Nsp15 endonuclease, without a laboratory. The EU contributed €1,439,900 to a project with a total cost of €2,574,750, which ran from 1 August 2020 to 31 October 2022, according to CORDIS. Its final report says the test was "ready to be deployed in the market". No launch followed. On 17 July 2024 the commercial court in Donostia-San Sebastián declared the company insolvent at its own request, without assets, according to the Official Gazette of the Commercial Register (BORME).

Where SOMAprobes Stands Today

The BORME entry of 4 October 2024 records insolvency proceeding 155/2024 at Commercial Court No. 1 of Donostia-San Sebastián: a voluntary insolvency, declared "sin masa", meaning without an estate, by an order of 17 July 2024 that is final, together with an order intervening in or suspending the management's powers over the company's assets (BORME). Infoempresa lists the company's current status as "Concursal" (in insolvency) and gives 4 October 2024 as the date of its latest BORME publication. No later entry recording the conclusion of the proceedings or the company's removal from the register was found, so SOMAprobes remains formally in insolvency.

The public face of the company disappeared at the same time. An archived copy of its website from 4 August 2024 shows only the hosting notice "Web deshabilitada" (website disabled), and the domain somaprobes.com now shows a domain registrar's parking page. No news from or about the company after the end of the EIC project could be found.

The Technology: Reading an Infection From Enzyme Activity

Most COVID-19 tests look for the virus's genetic material (PCR) or for its proteins (antigen tests). SOMAprobes took a third route that its scientific founder had worked on for years: many bacteria and viruses release nucleases, enzymes that cut DNA or RNA, and a short synthetic strand of nucleic acid designed to be cut only by one target enzyme can report that enzyme's activity. Frank Hernández, who also led a research group at Linköping University in Sweden, described this approach in a 2022 seminar at CIC biomaGUNE as using nucleases as biomarkers of infection, with probes that detected specific bacteria within 45 minutes in animal models.

For Corona-Quick, the company screened probes against clinical samples, identified one specific to the coronavirus Nsp15 endonuclease, and integrated it into a lateral flow strip of the kind used for pregnancy tests, according to the CORDIS project report. Because the enzyme is made by a replicating virus, the company argued that the test would show an active infection rather than leftover viral material. Its archived product page from June 2021, where the test was called NuCor, described the steps: saliva mixed with the probe, 30 minutes of incubation, then a 10-minute strip read. The same page listed NuSep, a sepsis test based on nuclease activity in a drop of blood, and Nosoplex, a project to detect bacteria and their antibiotic resistance.

The sources disagree on how long the test takes. The final CORDIS report says 25 minutes. A June 2020 article on Capital-Riesgo.es, based on a release by the BIC Gipuzkoa incubator, gave 45 minutes. The company's own 2021 instructions add up to 40 minutes.

No peer-reviewed paper or independent evaluation of the test's sensitivity and specificity was found. The CORDIS report states that four feasibility studies with real samples were run in hospitals and screening sites with a contract research organisation, but publishes no accuracy figures.

What the EIC Award Promised, and What the Record Shows

The European Commission's list of selected companies names "Somaprobes, S.L." of Donostia among the projects selected in the 20 March 2020 cut-off under its COVID-19 heading, with "grant only" financing and no other beneficiary for the project. That differs from what the company said at the time: the June 2020 Capital-Riesgo.es article reported a €1.4 million grant plus a possible equity investment of up to €2 million tied to milestones, for a package of €3.4 million, and the company's website in December 2022 still described "2 millones en negociación de capital" (€2 million of equity under negotiation), according to an archived copy. SOMAprobes does not appear in any of the 16 pages of the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked on 14 October 2026, so no equity investment by the EIC is on record.

The grant amounts also differ by source. CORDIS gives €1,439,900 of EU money on a total cost of €2,574,750. An article by the European Commission's Representation in Spain gave a total budget of €2,000,000 and an EU contribution of €1,500,000, or 75%. The same article says a first EIC application in 2019 missed the cut-off score, and quotes Hernández saying the grant let the company "empezar a jugar de verdad, jugar al juego de hacer un producto, no de hacer ciencia" (start playing for real, the game of making a product, not of doing science).

The CORDIS objective promised to validate the test's diagnostic accuracy and to "bring two different applications of the test to market within 20 months". The project summary spoke of reaching the market within 12 months, and in June 2020 Hernández told the incubator he wanted a product "antes de final de año" (before the end of the year), with a target price of about €25 and a two-phase trial at Cruces hospital of 200 and then 5,000 patients, according to Capital-Riesgo.es. The final report, covering the whole project, lists what was done:

1. Nsp15-specific probe on a saliva stripDeliveredProbe identified and integrated into a lateral flow strip, per the CORDIS report.
2. Clinical validation of accuracyPartlyFour feasibility studies reported; no accuracy data or 5,000-patient trial published.
3. Quality management systemDeliveredReported as implemented in the CORDIS report.
4. Manufacturing partnerNot achieved"Pending to be negotiated" at project end; none announced since.
5. Two applications on the market within 20 monthsNot achievedNo CE marking, sale or launch announced; insolvent in 2024.

The project ended on schedule on 31 October 2022 with working prototypes, four versions of which the company said were ready to be tested to choose the commercial one. The report's own conclusion was candid about the market: the work "experienced very high pressure from the rapid developing COVID-19 IVD market". From 26 May 2022 new diagnostic tests in the EU fell under the stricter In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Regulation. Whether SOMAprobes ever applied for certification could not be verified.

The Money and the Company Behind It

SOMAprobes grew on public money. Its website listed a €50,000 business idea prize from BIC Gipuzkoa and the Basque Government in 2014, a €94,000 Horizonte PYME grant in 2016 after an EU SME Instrument Phase 1 Seal of Excellence, €208,000 from the Spanish NEOTEC-CDTI programme in 2017, and €250,000 from the Biozientziak Gipuzkoa Foundation in March 2020 for sepsis validation (archived company website). Only the EIC grant is confirmed by a second source; the smaller amounts rest on the company's own account. CORDIS lists no other EU-funded project for the company. No private funding round has been reported.

Its filed accounts are not freely available. Register aggregators disagree on its size: eInforma lists 1 employee and net equity of roughly €3,100 to €60,000, while Infoempresa estimates 10 to 49 employees and turnover below €2 million. In June 2020 the company had 5 staff, according to Capital-Riesgo.es, and Hernández told the Commission's Spanish office that the EIC grant had let it restructure and hire. Neither aggregator figure could be checked against the filed accounts.

Why It Mattered to Europe

Fast testing that does not depend on scarce PCR reagents was a strategic gap in the first months of the pandemic, which is why the EIC ran a COVID-19 selection in March 2020. The Commission later set up DG HERA as a direct result of the lessons of COVID-19, to "secure ready availability and accessibility of medical countermeasures" in future health crises. A diagnostic platform that can be pointed at a new pathogen's enzymes fits that aim, and the CORDIS report presents the nuclease method as a tool "against emerging pathogens and future pandemics". The technology has not reached European users in any form that can be found in public records.

The Verdict

SOMAprobes and its insolvency administrators have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.