ErVimmune’s approach to cold tumours

ErVimmune is a Lyon, France based biotech founded in October 2019 as a spin off from the Centre Léon Bérard and Cancer Research Center of Lyon. The company develops next generation immunotherapies that target antigens derived from human endogenous retroviruses, or HERVs. The stated clinical focus is on cold tumours that do not react to existing checkpoint inhibitors, with initial indication priorities of triple negative breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

From clinical observation to a HERV vaccine platform

The idea for ErVimmune originated with Prof. Stéphane Depil, an onco-hematologist with two decades of experience in oncology drug development. In clinical practice he observed patients with tumours that are immunologically cold, meaning they lack existing immune infiltration and do not benefit from current immunotherapies. Research into endogenous retroviruses identified a class of viral-like sequences that can be aberrantly expressed in tumours and act as immunogenic targets. ErVimmune built a discovery pipeline to identify and prioritise HERV-derived epitopes for T cell focused therapies and vaccines.

The scientific claim and its limits

ErVimmune emphasises two technical advantages. First, HERV derived epitopes are shared across tumour types and patients, which could enable off the shelf products rather than fully personalised therapies. Second, their viral nature may make them highly immunogenic and thus effective at recruiting T cell responses in tumours that are otherwise cold. These are plausible advantages, but they are not guarantees of clinical success. Shared antigens can raise safety concerns if low level expression occurs in healthy tissues. Achieving tumour infiltration, durable responses, and measurable clinical benefit will require careful clinical design and robust translational biomarkers.

ErVac01 and the company’s clinical roadmap

ErVimmune’s lead candidate is a vaccine referred to as ErVac01. The company reports that its collection of HERV derived epitopes covers more than 95 percent of the European population and over 80 percent of North American and Asian populations. The platform is positioned to support vaccine and T cell based modalities. ErVimmune’s public communications emphasise the potential for broad reach across patient groups because the target epitopes are shared rather than private tumour neoantigens.

Funding, visibility and the EIC connection

ErVimmune joined the EIC Community after being awarded EIC Accelerator support. In November 2023 the company received so called blended funding that the company reports as 14 million euros in total, split into a grant component and an equity component. The EIC award increased the company’s visibility in the European ecosystem and coincided with intensified investor engagement.

Leadership, programmes and pitching

Nathalie Donne, ErVimmune’s CEO, participated in the EIC Women Leadership Programme 9th cohort. The programme targets women innovators in the EIC and EIT communities and offers training, mentorship, business coaching and networking. Donne says the programme provided a supportive space to reflect on leadership and to practise pitching. She won the EIC WLP Pitching Spotlight which she credits with reinforcing investor interest during the Series A close.

Donne described the main pitch challenge as translating complex science a few minutes while avoiding oversimplification. Her view underscores a familiar tension in deep tech fundraising, where clarity of narrative and evidence of execution matter as much as the underlying science.

Broader EIC programmes and policy context

The EIC runs several targeted programmes to support deep tech and to address gender gaps, including Women TechEU and the EIC Women Leadership Programme. These initiatives are part of the EIC and EU strategy to bolster Europe’s innovation capacity for 2021 to 2027. The EIC reports that a growing share of supported companies are women led, which is a measurable outcome. Funding, coaching, and visibility from EIC instruments can help startups scale, but systemic challenges remain such as later stage follow on funding and market access.

Competitive landscape and regulatory path

ErVimmune’s HERV targeting approach sits alongside other cancer vaccine and T cell therapy efforts globally. The field includes personalised neoantigen vaccines, shared antigen vaccines, off the shelf T cell receptor therapies, and engineered cell therapies. For a HERV based vaccine to succeed it must show safety, robust T cell induction, tumour infiltration, and tangible clinical benefit. Regulatory authorities will expect well controlled safety monitoring and proof that the selected epitopes are tumour specific. Manufacturing and distribution of peptide or vector based vaccines at scale also present non trivial operational hurdles.

Risks and unanswered questions

Key open questions include the following. Will HERV expression be truly tumour restricted across tissues and patient populations? Can ErVac01 drive infiltration of cytotoxic T cells into immune excluded or otherwise suppressive tumour microenvironments? How durable will responses be and what combination strategies will be required, for example with checkpoint inhibitors or oncolytic agents? Finally, population coverage metrics depend on HLA assumptions and must be validated with clinical immunogenicity data.

Implications for patient benefit and EU competitiveness

If ErVimmune or similar approaches can convert cold tumours into immunologically active ones, that would expand therapeutic options for diseases such as triple negative breast cancer and ovarian cancer, where unmet need is high. From an industrial perspective success would strengthen Europe’s position in next generation immunotherapies. That said, translating scientific novelty into widely available medicines is slow and expensive. EU competitiveness gains depend not only on invention but also on predictable clinical paths, capital markets that support later stage development, manufacturing capacity, and regulatory alignment.

Advice and leadership lessons from the CEO

Donne emphasises persistence and the value of asking for help. She cites the EIC WLP for offering a community and practical training on negotiation, pitching and leadership. Her practical takeaway is a simple one, to step back and reflect periodically, which she calls getting to the balcony. That habit matters in founder led organisations because strategic decisions and fundraising timing often hinge on an ability to see the larger picture.

Appendix: EIC Women Leadership Programme Pitching Spotlight cohort

The Pitching Spotlight brought together nine founders from the WLP cohort including Nathalie Donne. The cohort represented a variety of sectors from food technology to diagnostics and materials reuse. The names and short descriptions follow.

Concluding assessment

ErVimmune is pursuing a scientifically interesting and potentially scalable approach to a hard problem in oncology. The company has secured notable European support and early stage financing, and the CEO has used EIC programmes to sharpen leadership and fundraising messaging. The crucial next steps are clinical proof of concept and reproducible immunogenicity across patient groups. Until first in human results are available, the platform should be seen as promising but unproven, and investors and patients alike will need transparent data to judge its real world potential.

If you want more detail on the science, regulatory considerations, or the EIC funding instruments cited in this article, say which area you want and I will expand.