Matisse Pharmaceuticals & EpiDisease receive EU funding for their eHISTOCURE project
Geleen, June 26, 2025.
Matisse Pharmaceuticals B.V., a clinical stage company developing a medicinal product for the treatment of inflammation and EpiDisease, a biotechnology company specializing in epigenetics and precision diagnostics, announce the award of a Eurostars grant in the total amount of €524.000 for their eHISTOCURE project.
The project aims to revolutionize the treatment and diagnosis of sepsis by developing and validating Matisse’s M6229 therapy alongside the HistSHOCK IVD kit, applied in the role of a Companion Diagnostic (CDx) tool. The joint implementation of HistSHOCK CDx and M6229 represents a precision medicine therapeutic approach to reduce the high mortality associated with sepsis and septic shock, which continues to be the leading cause of death in intensive care units (ICUs) worldwide.
Matisse’s M6229 targets life-threatening inflammation by neutralizing circulating cytotoxic histones. The combination of circulating histones detection tool (HistSHOCK CDx) and the M6229 therapy, targeting circulating histones, aims to create a powerful synergy of results, facilitating the identification of patients most likely to benefit from M6229 therapy. It has the potential to expedite approval for market authorization for both M6229 and the HistSHOCK CDx tool, leading to significant costs and capacity savings for intensive care unit (ICU)-treated patients and an improved quality of life for patients discharged from the ICU.
“We are pleased with the acknowledgement of the EU and look forward to execute this project together with our partner EpiDisease. Sepsis is one of the highest unmet medical needs with 1 out of 5 deaths attributable to sepsis worldwide, yet there is no effective cure available. A therapeutic approach targeting the root cause of a dysregulated immune system could change the way we manage sepsis effectively”, says Marcel Jacobs, Chief Executive Officer of Matisse Pharmaceuticals.
About Matisse Pharmaceuticals
Matisse Pharmaceuticals B.V. was founded in 2014 in Geleen, the Netherlands. Matisse is dedicated to develop a product portfolio of safe and innovative therapies for disease indications characterized by elevated levels of circulating cytotoxic histones, such as in sepsis and septic shock
Matisse’s platform technology M6229 is based on the discovery that in patients suffering from sepsis, proteins called histones are released into the blood stream by the innate immune system which are toxic to cell membranes leading to cell death and release of additional histones. Due to this self-enforcing cascade, septic patients threaten to die from organ failure. The highly negatively charged M6229 preferentially binds to the positively charged extracellular histones and inhibits the self-enforcing cascade of increasing histone levels, thereby preventing further organ damage and death.
About EpiDisease
EpiDisease is a biotechnology company based in Valencia, focused on the development of diagnostic solutions based on epigenetic biomarkers. Its mission is to advance personalized medicine through high-precision diagnostic tools.
HistSHOCK CDx is an in vitro diagnostic test based on mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to detect circulating histones in patients with sepsis. It allows the identification of patients who may benefit from treatment with M6229, improving stratification and clinical decision-making in intensive care units.
About sepsis
According to the WHO, sepsis is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Currently, there is no effective treatment against sepsis. From the 49 million patients globally suffering from sepsis every year, more than 20% die. Approximately 40% of the sepsis cases are children under the age of 5, with close to 3 million children not surviving sepsis. According to a study by Buchman et al. (2020), published in the Journal of Critical Care Medicine, sepsis is the most common cause of in-hospital deaths, costing over $62 billion annually in the USA alone.
About Eurostars
Eurostars is a Europe-wide programme set up to fund SME-driven research and development (R&D) activities. It aims to encourage these SMEs – which have to invest more than 10% of their annual turnover into R&D to be eligible – to lead international collaborative research and innovation projects by easing access to support and funding. The projects have to go through a EU approval phase and a national phase in the countries where the companies of the consortium are located. In the case of Matisse, this was The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). For EpiDisease, this was the Center for Technological Development and Innovation (CTDI).