Ten Italian Life Sciences Startups Kick Off the 7th Edition of the ITA Life Sciences Acceleration Program
The 7th edition of the ITA Life Sciences Acceleration Program started this week. It's part of the Global Startup Program, organized by ITA, the Italian Trade Agency, and run in the U.S. by Elpis Labs.
Ten Italian life sciences startups got in. We kept it small on purpose, so every founder gets real time with the people who matter for their business. Over the next six weeks they'll go from Zoom calls to San Diego and Boston, with a calendar full of meetings that actually count.
Key takeaways
The 7th edition of the ITA Life Sciences Acceleration Program is part of the Global Startup Program, organized by ITA and run in the U.S. by Elpis Labs.
Ten Italian companies across biotech and pharma, digital health, and bioeconomy and nutrition. Half are led by women founders.
Six weeks, from remote sessions to San Diego and Boston.
Demo days: San Diego, November 5 and Boston, November 12.
Matching sprints are open to VCs, healthcare angels, procurement teams, clinical networks, health systems and pharma CVCs, each with a 1:1 slot.
If you followed our earlier Italian Global Startup Program work in New York, this is the same partnership pointed at life sciences, with the cohort split between two U.S. clusters. It's part of the wider set of programs we build with government and public-sector partners.
Meet the 2026 cohort of Italian life sciences startups
Biotech & pharma
Kiran biotech (Rita De Santis). Their AvidinOX® platform gets radiotherapy straight to tumors surgeons can't operate on, with far fewer side effects. It binds directly to the target tissue, so the radioactive molecules go to the cancer site and not the rest of the body.
THERA65 (Emanuela Grassilli). Going after cancers that stopped responding to treatment, while leaving healthy immune cells alone. They use aptamer-based PROTAC technology to degrade the p65BTK oncogene in solid tumors, and they're developing companion diagnostics alongside it.
BrightMol Biotech (Ilaria Zeni). Spun out of the University of Trento. They test whether AI-picked drug candidates actually work in living cells, 4x faster and at half the cost.
QubiTale (Lorenzo Pettenuzzo). Quantum-hybrid computing for drug discovery that runs on your own hardware. Open source, no license fees.
Digital health
Nemira Technology (Antonio Amendola). Helps families and doctors look after people with memory loss at home, and nobody has to wear a device.
Ninacare (Roberto Salamina). AI that handles hiring, onboarding and shift scheduling for care homes and hospitals, where staff shortages are brutal.
V-Apps.cloud (Stefano Vedovati). Quality, safety, compliance and HR in one place. They're also building patented AI to run robots on the factory floor.
Bioeconomy & nutrition
Alma Serum (Antonella Bellina). Takes the whey left over from cheesemaking and turns it into face masks that repair skin and boost collagen.
Blueat (Mariscadoras) (Carlotta Santolini). The blue crab is wrecking the Mediterranean. They catch it and turn it into food, chitosan and bioplastics. Nothing goes to waste.
AlphaFood (Antonio Pappalardo). Protein bars and powders made with cricket flour, plus a patented vertical farm to raise the crickets.
Four of the ten work on therapeutics and drug discovery; the rest build digital health tools and bioeconomy products. You can see where they fit in our healthcare and life sciences work.
Demo days: San Diego on November 5, Boston on November 12
The program closes with two demo days:
San Diego Demo Day: Thursday, November 5, 2026
Boston Demo Day: Thursday, November 12, 2026
Registration will be posted on Elpis Labs events. As we've written before, demo days have moved from pitching to strategic conversations. The meetings in the weeks before the stage are where most of those conversations start.
Who should book a 1:1 with the cohort?
The matching sprints are open to more than investors. If you're a VC, a healthcare angel, on a procurement team, part of a clinical network, at a health system or running a pharma CVC, there's a 1:1 slot for you. We match each guest to the companies that fit, so you spend your time with founders relevant to your work.
A note to the founders
Congrats on getting in. You're going to have a lot of meetings over the next six weeks. Some will go great, some won't, and the ones that don't will teach you the most. Take the notes, fix the deck, get to the next one.
Americans like it short and clear. Say what you do in one sentence, then show them the data. You've got the science. We'll get you into the right rooms.
Ci vediamo a San Diego.
Frequently asked questions
What is the ITA Life Sciences Acceleration Program? It is a U.S. acceleration program for Italian life sciences startups. The 7th edition is part of the Global Startup Program, organized by ITA, the Italian Trade Agency, and run in the U.S. by Elpis Labs. The 2026 cohort is ten companies, kept small on purpose, and over six weeks they move from remote sessions to San Diego and Boston.
Which companies are in the 2026 cohort? Ten Italian companies. Biotech and pharma: Kiran biotech, THERA65, BrightMol Biotech and QubiTale. Digital health: Nemira Technology, Ninacare and V-Apps.cloud. Bioeconomy and nutrition: Alma Serum, Blueat (Mariscadoras) and AlphaFood. They cover oncology, drug discovery, AI for care and compliance, skincare, biomaterials and alternative protein.
When are the demo days? There are two demo days. The San Diego Demo Day is on November 5, 2026, and the Boston Demo Day is on November 12, 2026. Registration details are posted on the Elpis Labs events page.
Who can join the matchmaking sprints? The matching sprints are open to more than investors. VCs, healthcare angels, procurement teams, clinical networks, health systems and pharma corporate venture teams can each get a 1:1 slot with cohort founders. To request one, contact Gabriel Arant at Elpis Labs through the contacts page at elpislabs.com.
Is the cohort all biotech companies? No. Four companies work on therapeutics and drug discovery. The other six build digital health tools and bioeconomy products, from AI staffing software for care homes and device-free home monitoring for people with memory loss to skincare made from dairy whey, bioplastics from invasive blue crab and cricket-based protein. Life sciences describes the room better than biotech.
Book a 1:1 with the cohort
If you invest in life sciences, buy for a health system, run a clinical network or scout for a pharma venture arm, these ten founders are worth a meeting. Contact our team and ask for Gabriel Arant. Italian founders thinking about a future edition can start with our U.S. market entry programs for startups.
About Elpis Labs
Elpis Labs is a corporate innovation and U.S. market-access firm connecting corporations, startups, investors, and public-sector organizations across global innovation ecosystems.
We help corporations discover emerging technologies, scout high-potential startups, and design pilot and innovation programs. For international startups and public-sector partners, we build accelerator, soft-landing, trade-mission, and market-entry programs that create practical pathways into the U.S. market.
With a strong B2B focus and global network, Elpis Labs specializes in innovation matchmaking, technology scouting, cross-border market entry, and ecosystem development.
Elpis Labs runs the U.S. side of the ITA Global Startup Program. An earlier New York edition had a cohort of 10 Italian companies. One of them, Voinosis (AI healthcare), set up a clinical pilot with Mount Sinai New York and closed a $2M raise within four months of finishing the program.
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