Catalonia-Israel Commerce Chamber

 Israel’s thriving Life Sciences industry is world renowned for its groundbreaking innovations, ingenuity and creativity.  Israel is home to over 900 Life Science companies, with 50-60 new companies being formed  

each year. Multinationals including J&J, Perrigo, GE Healthcare and Phillips Medical, together with local companies such as Teva, Given Imaging, Insightec, Medinol, Disc-o-tech, Brainstorm and others have been at the global forefront in the development and marketing of life-changing medical breakthroughs and valuable innovations.

 

Highlights

 

·         Teva Pharmaceuticals is among the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world and is the leading generic pharmaceutical company. Teva recently purchased U.S. based Barr Pharmaceuticals for $7.4 billion.

·         Israel’s Life Sciences sector is supported by a strong foundation of academic excellence, including some of the world’s leading research institutes, renowned R&D facilities, such as The Technion and Weizmann Institute, as well as cutting-edge medical centers.

·         41% of all Life Sciences companies operating in Israel today were established during the last 5 years and over 1/3 of all LS start-ups are already generating revenue.

·         Israel’s LS companies are the source of numerous blockbuster drugs such as Copaxone and Rebif, generating over $5B in annual sales.

 

Rankings and Awards

 

·         Neurosonix received the European Association of Cardiac-Thoracic Surgery Techno-College Innovation

Award for its EmBlocker, which uses ultrasonic energy to non-invasively divert emboli flow away from the cerebral arteries.

·         Red Herring selected Brainsgate, developer of the Spheno-Palatine Ganglion (SPG) stimulation platform used for stroke victims and other CNS related indications, as one of the most promising 100 private companies in Europe in 2007.

·         Transpharma Medical received a designation by Red Herring’s 100 Europe in 2007 for developing and commercializing drug products utilizing a proprietary active transdermal drug delivery technology.

·         Scientific American Magazine listed Dr. Beka Solomon of Tel Aviv University and her research into the use of antibodies in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease as one of the 50 most significant breakthroughs in 2007.

·         Dr. Shulamit Levenberg, Head of the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion, was named by Scientific Magazine in 2007 as one of 50 top research contributors for her work in implanting blood vessels in muscle tissue without the body’s rejection of the implanted muscles and for her

efforts in tissue engineering using embryonic stem cells.

·         Scientific American Magazine cited a live tissue memory and processing chip created at Tel Aviv University, as one of the 50 most significant scientific breakthroughs of 2007.

 

 

Life Science Firsts and Other Rankings

 

·         1st in the world for Medical Device patents per capita and 4th in Bio-Pharma (USPTO).

·         1st in availability of Engineers and Scientists worldwide (IMD 2007).

·          Pioneering Stem Cell research & therapeutics:

§         1st to demonstrate in-vitro differentiation of human

   Embryonic Stem Cells (hESC) and generation of human embryonic bodies.

§         1st to genetically modify hESCs, including a line that represented a model for human disease (Lesch Nyhan disease).

§         1st clinical trials of cell therapy treatments.

·         Israel is 2^nd in Europe in the number per capita of private biotech companies with products in the pipeline.

·         Israel is 6^th in the world in the number of scientific publications per capita.

 

 

Life Changing Breakthroughs

 

Israel’s breakthroughs are often a result of several converging technologies including physics, mathematics, computer sciences, nanotechnology and other sectors.

 

 

·         Professors Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko of the Technion received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2004 for their discovery of Ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, leading to breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of diseases such as Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and Cystic Fibrosis.

 

·         Pillcam, the first miniature ingested camera which diagnoses and photographs abnormalities in the gastrointestinal tract was introduced by Given Imaging.

 

·         Galil Medical’s minimally invasive cryotherapy solutions freeze and ablate benign cancerous tissue, thereby hastening a patient’s’ recovery.

 

·         Teva’s Copaxone for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis and Azilect for Parkinson’s disease are revolutionary drugs developed in Israel.

 

·         Medinol’s closed cell stent is used worldwide for heart catheterization.

 

·         Rebif, a treatment for Central Nervous System disorders was developed by the Weizmann Institute and Serono.

 

·         Insightec developed the ExAblate 2000 non-invasive surgery, which uses MR guided focused ultrasound to treat uterine fibroids.

 

·         Exelon, a drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s originated at the Hebrew University and was developed and marketed by Novartis.

 

·         A chemotherapy drug for the treatment of ovarian cancer, Doxil, was developed at the Hadassah Medical Center and sold to Johnson & Johnson.

 

·         Microneedle based systems for the painless intradermal delivery of drugs was implemented by NanoPass which collaborated with GlaxoSmithKline on optimization of its platform for vaccine delivery.