London, United Kingdom – 30 June 2025 – Mitra Bio, the leader in non-invasive skin epigenetics, announced it has been awarded a €2.5 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to run a multi-site clinical trial across four UK and EU hospitals. The study will further validate Mitra Bio’s skin-tape DNA-methylation assay for early melanoma detection, aiming to relieve overstretched dermatology services and improve patient outcomes.
The EIC Accelerator is one of the most competitive funding programmes in the world. In its latest call only 40 start-ups from 948 applicants were funded after a three-stage evaluation of start-ups across deep-tech sectors including AI, energy, biotechnology and space.
Transforming melanoma triage
European healthcare systems face a surge in urgent skin-cancer referrals: in the UK alone, 60% of 1.2 million annual dermatology referrals are labelled “suspect skin cancer”, yet 94% prove to be benign. This generates long waiting lists, anxiety for patients and high costs for hospitals. Mitra Bio’s assay, performed on painless skin-tape samples, is designed to:
- deliver objective, DNA methylation-based results in days rather than weeks;
- reduce unnecessary biopsies and fast-track true positives to specialist care;
- cut expenditure on pathology and theatre time, freeing resources for other patients.
“We envision a future where patients can obtain a reliable melanoma test from their local pharmacy and receive their results in days. Currently, referral to a specialist can take weeks, followed by a biopsy that takes another few weeks to be processed and reported. This creates unnecessary strain on our healthcare systems and unnecessary stress for the patients. We hope to reduce both.” Shakiba Kaveh, PhD, Co-founder and CEO of Mitra Bio.
Building on a proven platform
The upcoming clinical trials will build on top of a pilot study Mitra Bio conducted in 2023 in collaboration with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. The pilot, funded by a £530k grant from Innovate UK, recruited 217 participants with lesions suspected to be melanoma. The lesions were sampled with Mitra Bio’s non-invasive platform and then subsequently diagnosed using skin biopsy and histopathology analysis. Comparing the DNA methylomes of cancerous and non-cancerous lesions, the Mitra team identified a unique set of CpG sites whose methylation profiles were associated with melanoma.
This series of melanoma studies leverages Mitra Bio’s proprietary skin epigenetics platform, which has already helped skincare and medical-device partners measure biological age, inflammation, and epigenetic regulation in thousands of skin samples. By extending the same platform to oncology, Mitra Bio aims to save lives as well as improve skin longevity.
“Extending our platform to oncology was inspired by my PhD research which focused on cervical cancer diagnosis using DNA methylation – deployed in the NHS Cervical Screening System as of 2025. It is a wonderful feeling to come full circle and take our skin epigenetics work at Mitra Bio and apply it to cancer diagnosis. Skin longevity and skin health comes hand in hand and I am proud that we are building a platform that supports both.” Cristiana Banila, PhD, Co-founder and CSO of Mitra Bio.
About the EIC Accelerator
The EIC Accelerator offers up to €2.5 million in grant funding and optional equity support. Earlier rounds have recorded more than 1,200 full proposals for a single cut-off. Its funding portfolio includes 10 companies that later achieved unicorn status, collectively worth more than $20 billion, including the $4 billion healthtech start-up SWORD Health and $3 billion biotech BioArctic, the co-developer of Alzheimer drug Lecanemab.
About Mitra Bio
Mitra Bio is a London-based biotechnology company pioneering non-invasive skin epigenetic testing. Its patent-pending, tape-strip sampling and next-generation sequencing workflow provides deep epigenetic insights to skincare, medical device, and pharmaceutical companies, replacing traditional biopsies with fast, painless testing. Mitra Bio’s mission is to enable skin longevity and improve patient care through the power of epigenetics.
Note: Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Innovation Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
