Women TechEU is an initiative funded by the European Innovation Ecosystems (EIE, Horizon Europe) programme, which supports start-ups founded and led by women. In addition to a non-dilutive grant of €75,000, the winners receive personalised mentoring and specialised training to scale their innovations and boost their entrepreneurial ventures. According to the announcement, “the success of these pioneering women is reshaping industries and demonstrating the transformative impact of women in technology”. Pilar Domingo-Calap has been recognised in the Biotechnology, Life Sciences and Agrotechnology sector. 

Since completing her doctoral thesis in 2012, for which she received a Special Doctoral Award, she has dedicated her career to studying and evolving bacteriophages (or phages), viruses that exclusively target bacteria. Currently, phages are the basis of an innovative technology designed to combat multi-resistant bacteria — one of the most serious threats to human, animal and plant health — developed by Evolving Therapeutics, a company in which Pilar Domingo is both a co-founder and the scientific director. 

Founded in 2023 as a spin-off of the University of Valencia and based at the university’s Science Park, Evolving isolates phages from the environment, characterises and optimises them in the laboratory and produces therapeutic vials. “Our solution is an ecological, safe, precise and effective alternative against multi-resistant bacteria that cannot be treated with currently available antibiotics because they have become resistant to them”, explains Pilar Domingo. Since 2023, the company, in collaboration with its research group at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), has carried out a total of 15 compassionate-use treatments — last-resort therapies — for patients suffering from chronic infections caused by bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Mycobacterium abscessus. The company is now awaiting approval for its first clinical trial. 

“The treatments we have conducted have demonstrated the safety and efficacy of phages for infections that were previously untreatable with existing antibiotics. To date, we have treated chronic infections, mostly in people with cystic fibrosis or lung infections, but also with prosthetic infections. The results strongly support the use of this therapy in clinical settings. We hope that clinical trials will further validate this therapy as a solution accessible to all patients”, the scientist concludes. 

Pilar Domingo-Calap is a Ramón y Cajal researcher at I2SysBio, where she leads the Environmental and Biomedical Virology group, formed by 15 members and with nine doctoral theses in progress. She has authored over 70 scientific publications, including in Nature Communications, Nature Microbiology, PLOS Genetics, Cell Reports and Med. She has reviewed more than 100 articles and is an associate editor for Microbiology Spectrum, Frontiers in Virology and BioDesign Research. She leads both national and international research projects worth over €2 million, as well as different industry collaborations. 

Since 2022, she has been awarded several prizes, including the Young Virologist Award from the Spanish Society of Virology, the III International Zendal Award in Human Health, the R&D&I Award from the CASER Foundation, the AgrotecUV Award and the VLCStartUp Award, among others. The Women Tech EU prize now serves as further recognition of her pioneering and innovative work. Pilar Domingo co-founded the spin-off Evolving alongside her sister, Marisa Domingo-Calap, CEO of the company. “Gaining the support of Europe reassures us that we are on the right path. We are proud to be part of Women TechEU and are eager to learn and continue growing within an ever-increasing community of women. There are still too few of us in this sector and in entrepreneurship”. 

The prize will be used primarily for the renovation and expansion of the company's laboratories.