Every year, selecting the finalists for the Startup Pitch Event becomes more challenging, and 2026 was no exception. The level of creativity, ambition, and innovation we saw this year was truly impressive. A huge thank-you to everyone who submitted a pitch: you made the decision incredibly tough!

We’re excited to welcome the finalists to the stage at the 10th AMR Conference in Basel, where they’ll present their ideas live to the audience. The event will be moderated by Guillermo Tramontin, who will guide us through an engaging and dynamic pitch session.

The live pitch competition takes place on March 3 at 6pm CET, kindly sponsored by Vossius. Expect an energetic evening as startups pitch their ventures and the audience votes live to decide the winner.

Want to know who made it to the final round? Meet the finalists, watch their pitch videos, and explore their groundbreaking ideas on this post — and be ready to vote for your top three favorites during the live final.

And by the way, have you registered for the AMR Conference yet? Register now and join us in Basel this March. We can’t wait to see you there!

The Finalists

Triari Pharmaceuticals
Presented by: John A. Zurawski
Website: http://www.triaripharma.co
The innovation in one sentence: Optimized monoclonal antibodies targeting novel epitopes on the surface of P. aeruginosa.
Watch Pitching video

Luminicell
Presented by: Jax Lee
Website: www.luminicell.com
The innovation in one sentence: A Novel Class of Antimicrobial Drugs for Fungal Infections.
Watch Pitching video

Resistia
Presented by: Ignacio Massone
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/resistia/
The innovation in one sentence: Resistia is developing bio-therapies based on microbiota compounds to target resistant biofilm-related infections.
Watch Pitching video

Hermione Therapeutics
Presented by: Anne Michel
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hermionetherapeutics/
The innovation in one sentence: Take control over exacerbations in chronic respiratory diseases from 1st intent and prevent resistance to occur.
Watch Pitching video

Arrowsmith
Presented by: Ayaka Washizaki
Website: https://arrowsmith.co.jp/
The innovation in one sentence: Arrowsmith is a Japan-based startup developing engineered phage therapies for AMR, leveraging our synthetic engineering platform with a lead program ARW001 for Pseudomonas aeruginosa targeting IND submission in 2026.
Watch Pitching video

MetalloBio
Presented by: Michael Murray
Website: https://www.metallobio.com/
The innovation in one sentence: MetalloBio is exploiting its proprietary inorganic chemistry platform to develop totally new classes of broad spectrum antibiotic candidates for drug development to tackle complicated infections and to generate antibacterial coatings for medical devices and civilian uses.
Watch Pitching video

Baxiva
Presented by: Giorgia Greter
Website: https://www.baxiva.com/
The innovation in one sentence: Next-generation glycoconjugate vaccines to fight E. coli.
Watch Pitching video

Arvalus
Presented by: Christian Brandstetter
Website: https://arvalus-therapeutics.com/
The innovation in one sentence: Arvalus is pioneering a next-generation live biotherapeutic product (LBP) engineered to precisely target and eradicate multi-drug-resistant and pathogenic bacteria from the gut.
Watch Pitching video

80SBIO
Presented by: Arka Banerjee
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/80sbio-gmbh/
The innovation in one sentence: QuantR detects AMR rapidly, even before the first cycle of cell division by detecting the replication of RNA that precedes cell division.
Watch Pitching video

AstralytiX (KU Leuven)
Presented by: Katrien Trappeniers
Website: under construction
The innovation in one sentence: FibriLysins – Breaking barriers, defeating resistance. A novel class of endolysins to cure difficult-to-treat staphylococcal infections.
Watch Pitching video