TEL AVIV, ISRAEL | Israel has launched an ambitious national biotechnology initiative that brings together 15 of the countryโs leading universities, hospitals, and healthcare organizations to transform world-class biomedical research into new medicines and commercially viable biotechnology companies.
The Israel National Biotech Innovation Center, known as INBI, officially announced the launch of its activities on Tuesday, Sept. 8.
Structured as a non-profit national center of excellence, INBI is designed to tackle one of the central weaknesses in Israelโs otherwise formidable innovation economy: the difficulty of moving promising biomedical discoveries from university and hospital laboratories through the expensive and complex stages required to create new drugs.
The organization is seeking approximately US$500 million in philanthropic funding over 10 years, according to reporting by The Times of Israel. It plans to select approximately 10 promising early-stage biotechnology projects each year and provide them with scientific, development, commercial, and financial support.
The goal is not simply to fund additional academic research. INBI intends to create a centralized national infrastructure that can take discoveries beyond the laboratory and develop them into therapeutic programs advanced enough to attract investors, pharmaceutical companies, and other commercial partners.
“Israel possesses world-class academic research, yet only a fraction of this potential successfully translates into scaled economic value and patient impact,” said Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, who has been appointed CEO of INBI Core, the centreโs wholly owned operational subsidiary.
“Our model was created to fundamentally change this dynamic.”
Cohen-Dayag said INBI will provide the infrastructure, expertise, and capital required to turn scientific discoveries into potential therapies that can reach patients.
Israelโs Leading Research Institutions Join Forces
The scale of institutional participation makes INBI unusual within Israelโs highly decentralized research and healthcare ecosystem.
Its 15 founding partners include the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Bar-Ilan University and University of Haifa.
Israelโs major medical and healthcare institutions are also represented, including Sheba Medical Center, Hadassah Medical Center, Rambam Health Care Campus, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, commonly known as Ichilov, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Beilinson Hospital at Rabin Medical Center.
Clalit Health Services and Maccabi Healthcare Services, Israelโs two largest health maintenance organizations, are also founding partners.
The collaboration creates a national network spanning basic scientific research, clinical medicine, patient populations, health data and commercialization expertise.
INBI says it is the first time Israelโs major sources of life-sciences research have joined in a single national biotechnology development platform.
Samuel Moed, former head of corporate strategy at global pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb, will serve as chairperson of both INBI and INBI Core.
“INBI represents a visionary model and marks the first-ever unity of all major sources of life sciences research in Israel, joining forces to create a national center of excellence with the mission of accelerating human cures,” Moed said.
The initiative was developed under the umbrella of 8400 The Health Network, an Israeli organization focused on strengthening the countryโs health technology ecosystem.
Closing Israelโs Biotechnology Gap
Israel has established an international reputation for technology entrepreneurship, particularly in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, software, defense technology and digital health.
Biomedical research presents a different commercialization challenge.
Turning a laboratory discovery into an approved medicine can require many years of development, extensive preclinical and clinical testing, regulatory expertise and hundreds of millions of dollars in capital.
That makes biotechnology substantially different from many software ventures, where products can often reach customers more quickly and with considerably less initial investment.
Israelโs universities and medical centers have produced internationally significant research, but INBIโs founders argue that the country has not consistently converted that scientific strength into a large pipeline of globally competitive biotechnology companies.
Moed told The Times of Israel that Israelโs life-sciences research competes in quality with major international centers, but promising discoveries can remain trapped in laboratories because they have not been developed far enough to become attractive investments.
INBI is intended to occupy precisely that difficult middle ground.
Rather than waiting for private investors to finance extremely early and scientifically risky discoveries, the center plans to provide centralized expertise in areas including early drug development, scientific validation, infrastructure, intellectual property, financing and commercial strategy.
Promising projects would progress through a structured, multi-year development process intended to reduce scientific and commercial risk.
Successful programs could ultimately emerge as independent biotechnology companies, attract private investment, enter partnerships with pharmaceutical companies or pursue other commercialization pathways.
Experienced Biotech Leadership
Cohen-Dayag brings approximately three decades of scientific and biotechnology experience to the initiative.
She currently serves as executive chair of Israeli biotechnology company Compugen and previously served as its president and CEO for 15 years.
During her tenure, Compugen evolved from a computational biology services company into a clinical-stage therapeutic developer specializing in cancer immunotherapy.
She also oversaw partnerships with major international pharmaceutical companies.
Cohen-Dayag holds a masterโs degree in chemical immunology and a PhD in cellular biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Moed brings more than three decades of international healthcare and biopharmaceutical experience. He previously served as senior vice-president of corporate strategy at Bristol Myers Squibb.
Their appointments signal INBIโs emphasis on combining academic science with the expertise required to navigate pharmaceutical development, financing and commercialization.
An Ambitious National Experiment
The initiative represents an unusually coordinated attempt to reproduce in biotechnology some of the conditions that helped turn Israel into an international technology powerhouse.
Its success, however, will ultimately depend on execution.
Raising approximately US$500 million in philanthropic capital would itself be a substantial undertaking. Developing experimental therapies into investable programs also carries significant scientific risk, and many drug candidates fail during development regardless of the quality of the underlying research.
INBIโs model reflects that reality.
Instead of trying to eliminate biotechnology’s inherent risk, the organization aims to build the infrastructure needed to identify the strongest discoveries, develop them systematically, and determine which have the potential to become medicines.
If successful, the center could produce benefits extending beyond individual drugs or start-ups.
A steady pipeline of commercially viable biotechnology companies could attract international pharmaceutical investment, retain Israeli scientific talent, create specialized jobs and deepen Israelโs position within the global life-sciences industry.
More importantly, discoveries currently confined to Israeli laboratories could gain a clearer pathway toward clinical development and ultimately reach patients.
For a country already recognized internationally for converting technological innovation into globally competitive companies, INBI represents an attempt to apply that same national ambition to one of scienceโs most difficult challenges: turning discoveries into medicines.
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