In a recently published article titled: The Israeli Biotech System: Problems and Vision, authored by Clal Biotechnology, (CBI) The company's CEO proclaimed "it is an industry in which start-ups and emerging companies must try to overcome the many intrinsic problems and obstacles, with no help or support (technical, financial or other) from the larger Israeli pharma and biotech companies (which are busy with their own agendas and difficulties or are just risk averse).
Actually, it is not necessarily so, we would like to point out that developments in the industry reveal a different picture. At a recently held Israel Venture Association Conference, Israel Makov, CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries announced that Teva will invest $3 million in Gamida-Cell, which has developed a technology to treat blood diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma. Gamida-Cell's technology increases stem cell reproduction while limiting mutations.
Moreover, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Giza Venture Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, and Hadasit, a subsidiary of Hadassah Medical Organization, have recently announced that they have jointly invested $11 million to form Bioline Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical drug development company.
Bioline will license compounds, primarily from Israeli academia and hospitals. Its strategy will be to develop such compounds through proof of efficacy in patients.
Clal Biotechnology Industries, (CBI) a $140 million Israeli fund created to invest in Israeli biotechnology, perhaps unnoticed by most observers, recently announced that it is "expanding its investment focus to include companies all over the world, and that it has recently invested over $25 million in French and US-based companies, respectively." That would put CBI's foreign holdings at more than 18% of its portfolio and indicated, perhaps, that it might have erred in its own prior choices.