BIOCRATES LIFE SCIENCES AG

Their core work

Biocrates is an Austrian life sciences company specializing in targeted metabolomics — the quantitative measurement of metabolites in biological samples. They provide standardized metabolomics kits and analytical services used in biomedical research, particularly in areas like cancer biology, drug repurposing, and antiviral research. In H2020 projects, they contribute metabolomics expertise as a technology provider, enabling consortium partners to generate reproducible, quantitative metabolic data for translational research applications.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Biocrates entered H2020 in 2017 with fundamental cancer biology research (mitochondria in tumorigenesis), then shifted toward more translational and applied biomedical topics. By 2018-2019, their projects focused on drug repurposing, pre-clinical validation, and antiviral immunometabolism — areas with clearer therapeutic applications. This suggests a deliberate move from basic research support toward projects with more direct clinical and pharmaceutical relevance.

Biocrates is moving toward applied biomedical metabolomics with direct therapeutic relevance, making them increasingly relevant for pharma-adjacent consortia focused on drug development and infectious disease.

How they like to work

Biocrates consistently participates as a partner rather than leading consortia — they have zero coordinator roles across all three projects. With 38 unique partners across 11 countries from just 3 projects, they operate in large, multi-national consortia (typical of MSCA training networks and RIA projects). This profile indicates a specialist contributor that brings a specific analytical capability to broad research networks rather than driving project strategy.

Despite only three projects, Biocrates has built a broad European network spanning 38 unique partners across 11 countries, reflecting their participation in large MSCA training networks and research consortia. Their reach is pan-European with no strong geographic clustering.

What sets them apart

Biocrates occupies a distinctive niche as a commercial provider of standardized metabolomics technology within academic-led research consortia. Unlike university labs that develop custom assays, Biocrates offers reproducible, kit-based quantitative metabolomics — a critical advantage for multi-site studies where data comparability matters. For consortium builders, they bring industrial-grade analytical infrastructure without the overhead of a large pharma partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• REPO-TRIAL
  Combines computational (in silico) drug repurposing with pre-clinical validation — a translational approach bridging informatics and wet-lab metabolomics that ran until 2024.
• INITIATE
  Positioned metabolomics at the intersection of innate immunity and virology, a research direction that gained urgency with RNA virus pandemics post-2019.