An opinion piece (“Makor Rishon”) by Dr. Dana Bar-On (Teva) on advancing the Israeli academic innovation into new technologies in biotech and medicine.
Dr. Dana Bar-On, Senior Director, Director of Academic Relations, Research, and Global Development at Teva, leads the Bio-Mix program together with Professor Yesha Sivan, founder, and CEO of i8V and DigitalRosh. The program was created by Teva together with i8 Ventures as part of the National Forum for Bio-Innovators for doctoral students and post-doctoral students from leading universities in Israel. The purpose of the program is to connect research and academic labs to “real world”. In 2022, the third cycle of the program began.
The innovation report for 2022 revealed that future technologies and medicines may escape from Israel” – says Dana – “and it’s a shame. The human capital of researchers here can be harnessed for the development of life-saving drugs and tools.”
In the changing world of technology, and especially in the challenging one that combines technology with biotech and pharma, identifying new discoveries and groundbreaking research at an early stage is vital. Creating creative collaborations to advance such initiatives, and nurture them to maturity is a key to accelerating development processes in the medical world. We saw this even more during the Covid-19 crisis, which caused an acceleration in the entire world of applied medical developments while creating global, unprecedented efforts of digitalization. Shared by academia, industry, and clinics with regulatory and government support, digitization of the medical world has been pushing forward the medical world – proof that it is possible to significantly shorten the development processes. […]
Israel ranks first in the world in the field of collaborations between academia and industry according to the global innovation index, but when we get down to the fine print of these figures, we see that this is mainly due to the activities of foreign multinational companies, who keep their R&D centers in Israel (about 85% of all collaborations). While this activity is of course welcome, the question regarding the long term arises: will the research and development activity will remain in Israel when these collaborations develop into sustainable technologies and products? That is – how do we strengthen the long-term activity in the later stages of product development, with an emphasis on innovative drugs? And above all, how do you build capabilities and knowledge in advanced development stages?
[…] Teva is constantly searching for original and more efficient ways to speed up the process of “translating” academia to industry, by integrating technologies and computational science, including artificial intelligence, in the development stages. In addition, we believe that exposure, learning, and mutual support between academia and industry are the secret key to speeding up the drug development process and reducing failures. We see that the Israeli biotech startup world has expanded in the last two years in the field of biotech. It is led in large part by university researchers who establish new startups, alongside their extensive research activities at universities.
This is a well appreciated development that strengthens the relationship between industry and academia, but at the same time requires a lot of support from the existing industry to help those startups mature. Specifically, the emphasis should be on training the young generation of entrepreneurs-researchers in the field of biotech. For this purpose, Teva established the national BioInnovators Forum, which, in 2022, is in its third year of activity, with over 100 doctoral and post-doctoral students in biotech and medicine. They undergo intensive training by mentors from Teva, the industry, biotech, and high-tech communities, on how to develop successful biotech ventures. The mentors help them make the “translation” or transition from an academic idea to a product or drug.
The human capital, the biotech Ph.D. graduates in Israel, is a treasure trove that must also be directed to the worlds of startups and the biotech industry. For this purpose, the training should start already during their studies.
The experience of those scientists as part of the post-doctorate abroad is essential to the enrichment of the Israeli ecosystem and the accumulation of practical knowledge, since many of the leading laboratories abroad, especially in the USA, are closely connected to the industry. Teva, for the past 4 years, has been working together with Science Abroad organization to bring back to Israel the best Israeli scientists who are based abroad. We offer them fascinating career paths that allow them to combine experience and specialization in the best technologies and science, all in their homeland of Israel. […] The relationship between academia and industry is critical to the development of the biotech market in Israel. So is introducing the worlds of bio-convergence (combining the fields of biology with fields or engineering methods such as electronics, AI, computational biology, nanotechnology, and more). Such a combination is the basis for Israel’s future comparative advantage. […]
