Baxiva is an ETH Zurich spin-off developing a vaccine against harmful strains of E. coli, which can cause urinary tract infections (UTIs) and life-threatening invasive infections. UTIs are among the most common bacterial diseases worldwide, and routine antibiotic treatment disrupts the body’s healthy microbiota and contributes to the growing global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), making infections increasingly difficult to treat.
Baxiva is translating a breakthrough vaccine production platform, developed at ETH Zurich, that precisely links sugar antigens from the bacterial surface to safe and immunogenic nanoparticles. The resulting vaccines train the immune system to recognize and eliminate harmful bacteria before an infection takes hold.
The expected impact is to prevent serious E. coli infections, reduce hospitalizations and downstream healthcare costs, and to help preserve antibiotic effectiveness.

The Innobooster project will identify, recombinantly produce, and chracterize high-affinity monoclonal antibodies that can serve as reference standards for vaccine analytics and immunogenicity testing. By replacing variable polyclonal sera with reproducible monoclonals, the project closes a key bottleneck between early R&D and preclinical development. The reagents will be integrated directly into Baxiva’s assay workflows, derisking preclinical studies and accelerating progress toward clinical readiness. Baxiva's vaccine program has gained strong external validation through partnerships with the INCATE and CARB-X accelerators. Overall, Innobooster enables research expertise to be converted into valuable tools that help bring urgently needed healthcare solutions to patients faster.