The Office of the Chief Scientist yesterday opened the bidding for selecting the winner in the tender to establish and operate a biotechnology incubator under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor's Incubator Program. Sources inform ''Globes'' that two big pharma companies are already interested in operating the incubator, and that one of them is creating a consortium with a leading Israeli life sciences venture capital fund for this purpose.
The deadline for submitting bids in the tender is March 20, 2013, and the Office of the Chief Scientist believes that the winning franchisee, which will operate the incubator for eight years, will be announced by the summer.
The new incubator will receive the franchise to operate a biotechnology incubator from BiolineRX Ltd. (Nasdaq: BLRX); TASE:BLRX) subsidiary Bioline Innovations Ltd. Bioline will continue to receive budgets for early-stage products through the Chief Scientist's regular channels.
The budget of a company in the biotechnology incubator is larger than the budget of a company in a high-tech incubator, and all companies in the biotechnology incubator automatically receive budgets for an extra three years.
Chief Scientist Avi Hasson said that the reform in the biotechnology incubators carried out in the past two years should offer a better response to the special needs of early-stage companies in the industry. "We're talking about a supplementary step to the measures we're taking to deal with the market failure in biotechnology in order to maintain the current innovation in the industry despite the difficulties in it," he said.
A study by the National R&D Council has found that, in 2002-2010, the number of jobs in the biotechnology industry rose by 32% from 3,427 to 4,537, and that the number R&D employees rose by 41% from 1,602 to 2,255. The number of companies rose by 57% from 148 in 2002 to 233 in 2010. These companies are investing more in R&D.
76% of biotechnology companies' revenue comes from product sales, which rose 130% in 2002-10 to $3.3 billion.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 15, 2012
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