Teva Pharmaceuticals was the result of the merger of three companies: Assia, Zori and Teva. The development of this group reflected the rise of the pharmaceutical industry in Israel. The first milestone was a warehouse for drugs established in Jerusalem in 1901 by Haim Solomon and Moshe Guttel Levin.
The initiative to establish a local pharmaceutical industry arose in the early 1930s. Nazi Germany was boycotted by the Jews in Palestine. As a result the main source of medical supplies was cut off. However, Jewish chemists began to arrive in Palestine from Germany and other European countries. One consequence being that expertise in pharmaceuticals rapidly accumulated.
The pharmaceutical industry gained momentum when the Second World War broke out. Local manufacturing was almost the only source for drugs within the countries in the region.
Unlike Israeli companies like CheckPoint and Comverse that were formed to address global and international issues Teva Pharmaceuticals came about as a result of a critical need within the country.
The company was blessed with visionary management that foresaw the future emergence of the generic drug industry. Since generics were exact copies of "name" drugs their price was considerably lower. Major international pharmaceutical companies refused to license their products to Teva. Teva got around the limitations by synthesizing these drugs in their own laboratories. Inadvertently this marked the onset of generics.
As a result of a management decision Teva obtained the rights to produce Copaxone from the Weizmann Institute. In due course copaxone became a blockbuster drug whose annual sales are reaching $1.0b. Copaxone lengthens the period between multiple sclerosis attacks.
Not known widely is that 2/3 of Ares Serono's, the Swiss Italian pharmaceutical giant annual sales are derived from Israeli laboratories. The company's leading product is bulk recombinant human interferon-beta-1a for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Manufactured by InterPharm and Serono, the product is marketed under the Rebif® commercial brand name. The second product came about from research dating from the 1960s by a young scientist named Aliza Eshkol, who worked at the gland research laboratories at Israel's Tel Hashomer Medical Center. The resulting product Gonal-F, generates 26% of Serono's annual revenues.
By a small stretch of the imagination, Serono's recent decision to close down InterPharm in Israel and to transfer it to Italy, is understandable.. By moving InterPharm to Serono, in due course, the Israeli origin and the drugs developed there will be erased. However, that does in no way detract from the remarkable technological capabilities of Israel's biotechnology researchers.
Government support programs in today's world are a must and should not be an issue for foreign companies seeking to gain a foothold in Israel.
The research and development commercialization companies, affiliated with this country's major universities, have available billions of dollars of know-how. They are unable to find enough licensees in Israel and would be more than happy to license their patents to overseas groups.
Perhaps in the final analysis as to why there is only one Teva, can be gleaned from the company's history. Its products were desperately needed by a Middle Eastern population that could not obtain drugs from overseas. It is also likely that today's Israeli entrepreneur does not dream of being an Eli Hurwitz, but would be more likely to emulate the founders of Mirabilis or ICQ who built businesses in a few years and rapidly cashed out in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Why is there only one Teva with annual sales of more than $4.0b? Why has Serono closed down InterPharm? What role do Government support programs play in nurturing a multinational?