Xenia Capital Venture Ltd. (TASE:XENA) has appointed Dr. Yafit Stark, senior director of global clinical research at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) to its board. Stark was in charge of the clinical development of Teva's Copaxone, and she later assumed responsibility for the company's entire clinical trials department. She is joining Xenia as an independent director and not as an official representative of Teva. She will continue to serve in her current role at Teva and will also maintain her individual involvement in other ventures, such as the Chief Scientist's Tnufa - Startup Promotion Program.
Drug development is a highly complex process requiring vast resources and considerable expertise. At present, BiolineRX Ltd. (TASE:BLRX) is the only incubator that has committed itself to this activity, for which it receives special funding from the state. It has also adopted a unique model under which all the projects are placed under one management team, with the aim of cutting costs and making optimal use of managerial experience. Xenia believes that it can invest in drug-related projects, even without special measures like these. "The big drug companies today are buying more young companies at much earlier stages than in the past, so less time and money are needed in order to get a return on investment," explains Xenia Ventures CEO Anat Segal. The incubator will, however, continued to invest in IT.
Yafit Stark said, "My contribution will be in both drug development management and finding new projects and collaborations, as I have done at Teva. We worked with quite a few young companies at Teva, including companies that specialize in medical devices. Xenia has an opportunity to support these projects both financially and professionally as early as the concept stage, and even before the embryonic stage, and help them take the ideas in a practical direction. We're already looking at a number of very interesting projects."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on June 28, 2007
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