The Central District Court accepted the recommendation by Advocate Dorit Levy Tyller, special manager for InSight Biopharmaceuticals, to sell the company's activity and assets to Estonian company PharmaEstica Manufacturing and its Israeli partner, Dr. Dobroslav Melamed. The price will be NIS 10.6 million.
InSight Biopharmaceuticals, which operates from the Science Park in Rehovot, was founded in 1991 by Dr. Naim Tamari (the sole shareholder in the company before it was sold). The company develops and produces drugs - mostly generic versions of drugs for treating chronic inflammations, osteoporosis, cancer, and multiple sclerosis. The company has unique capabilities in biosimilars - biological drugs. At its peak, the company had 140 employees. InSight Biopharmaceuticals sells its products to other companies, which distribute and market them. One of the company's main customers recently abandoned it, which had a major negative impact on InSight Biopharmaceuticals' business and caused its financial collapse.
In early May, Levy Tyller was appointed temporary liquidator for the company, after 36 of its 60 employees submitted a petition for the company's liquidation, asserting that Insight Biopharmaceuticals was insolvent, and had not paid their salaries. The liquidation petition also asserted that the company owed an estimated NIS 3.5 million in rent alone.
The selection of the buyer was made after the Estonian company submitted a substantially higher bid than the one submitted by its competitor, Swiss company BTG, which wanted to acquire only Insight Biopharmaceuticals' generic Copaxone activity for NIS 5.8 million.
Melamed is a former president of generic vaccinations company SciGen, sold to US biomed company Opko Health Inc. (NYSE: OPK; TASE: OPK). He was also a fertility researcher at Bar Ilan University, where he helped develop male fertility drugs and founded two other biomedical startups.
The price for the InSight Biopharmaceuticals acquisition includes the right to use the company's name and intellectual property. The bid was submitted through Advocate Mor Nardia.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on July 18, 2017
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