New initiative seeks $500m to commercialize Israeli life science

A new non-profit initiative aims to raise $500 million to commercialize life science technologies emerging from Israeli universities, addressing what its founders describe as a persistent gap between academic research and commercial readiness. The Israel National Biotech Innovation Center (INBI), together with its subsidiary fund INBI Core, will proactively identify university projects capable of leading Israel's life sciences industry and bridge them toward the commercial stage.

The initiative is led and chaired by Samuel Moed, who until 2020 served as head of Corporate Strategy at Bristol Myers Squibb (搜索)搜索该公司 (BMS), where he steered the company's acquisition of Celgene查看公司主页. After leaving BMS, Moed became a venture partner at venture capital firm aMoon (搜索)搜索该词条 and joined the boards of several Israeli companies. He also volunteered in the 8400 Helix US-IL Task Force initiative, a network of senior figures in Israel's biotech sector, within which the series of meetings that produced the plan was held.

Moed recruited Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag as CEO of the fund. Cohen-Dayag previously served as CEO of Israeli drug discovery company Compugen (搜索)搜索该公司, where she was highly respected, and currently serves as the company's chairperson, a role she will continue alongside managing the fund.

Cooperation between competitors

Fifteen Israeli academic institutions have joined as partners in the initiative, in what the organizers describe as a display of cooperation between competitors. Among them are the Weizmann Institute of Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and Bar-Ilan University. They are joined by healthcare organizations such as Maccabi Healthcare Services and Clalit Health Services, as well as the Beilinson, Sheba, Ichilov, Shaare Zedek, Rambam, and Hadassah hospitals.

INBI will work on two tracks to bridge the gap between the academic stage and readiness for the commercial stage: setting up startup companies, and giving commercialization licenses to pharma companies. The fund will not compete with the universities' existing technology transfer processes; rather, it will step in after projects undergo the usual commercialization process.

Addressing an under-exploited pipeline

Moed framed the initiative as a response to untapped potential in Israel's academic institutions. "During my career at BMS I learned to look at the whole value chain of innovation in life sciences in order to understand where the opportunities were, where the pain points were, where value is created and where value is destroyed," Moed told Globes. "When I retired, six years ago, many senior people in the Israeli ecosystem consulted me, and the desire grew within me to use my background to help Israel."

He added that the Helix project, in which forty senior people from the Israeli and US life sciences industries participated, revealed "huge potential in Israel's academic institutions that we estimated was only half exploited." The initiative drew on the experience of people who had set up the Broad Institute in Boston and those involved in the SPARK program at Stanford, a funding and mentorship program designed to help academics turn their inventions into practical applications.

Philanthropy as the foundation

Cohen-Dayag described the organization's day-to-day activity as proactive. "We will work proactively and identify innovations that we believe can turn into leading products. A committee that we shall form will select them and produce a special plan for unlocking their value," she said. She acknowledged that "some of the projects sink in the growing gap between academia and industry."

On funding, Moed emphasized that philanthropy will form the basis of the $500 million raise over ten years. "To raise the money we had to show that we had the cooperation of the leading institutions and also a team that knows what it's doing," he said. "We are now approaching philanthropists who want to promote human health and Israel." He noted that the government could be an important partner, citing the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy and Labor, and the Israel Innovation Authority as potential sources of top-up funding, while adding that "once there are successes, private capital will also find its way to our companies."

Timetable

The initiative expects to announce its first selected companies within a year. "We'll announce the first companies to be selected in a year's time," Cohen-Dayag said. Moed added, "In a year's time we'll have companies, and money assured for a decade. From there on, we expect rapid results." Law firm Gornitzky-GNY advised on the formation of the initiative and will continue to act for it.