By David E. Kaplan

In September 2002, a delegation of Israeli teenagers was pelted with projectiles by a hostile crowd in Johannesburg, South Africa. The young Israelis were representing their country at the prestigious ‘Conference of Sustainable Development’ and promoting ‘solar heating’ as an answer for much of Africa’s energy needs. This crowd was not buying! The only heat that interested them was in raising the tempo to attack Israel. Fast track to July 2007 and breaking news in almost every financial paper is: ‘California Utility Signs Worlds Largest Solar Deal’. The report announced that a California utility, PG & E, were buying 553 megawatts of electricity from a solar power plant to be built in the Mojave Desert by Solel, an Israeli company. That’s enough energy to light about 400,000 homes and will be the largest deal of its kind. Solel’s 6,000-acre Mojave Solar Park is set to begin operating in 2011.

“Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them.” Chaim Weizmann The Weizmann Institute introduces a few of its many stars. Dr. Roy Bar Ziv of the Weizmann Institute constructs synthetic circuits from DNA and other biological molecules; revealing principles of information flow and resource management in biochemical circuit design. Prof. Yaron Silberberg is the Dean of the Weizmann Faculty of Physics. His research concerns ultrafast laser physics – pulses of light a few millionths of a billionth of a second long that allow scientists to discern such phenomena as the movement of atoms in molecules. Prof. Daniella Goldfarb, of the Weizmann Institute, is a leading authority on magnetic resonance techniques. Prof. Dov Zipori of the Weizmann Institute, is an expert on mesenchymal stromal cells. One avenue of his research led to a discovery of a new approach to treating myeloma, a blood disease which is still considered incurable.

Who are the winners and who are the losers?

“Pelt us instead with questions,” the young Israelis could have retorted. “Why don’t you ask us how we have perfected growing your projectiles with our innovative drip systems?”

Holding placards of “Death to Israel”, the furthest thing on the minds of those protestors were advances in Israeli science and technology.

Investing in Education - MIning MInds

Confined in size by geographical borders still undetermined, there has been no holding Israel back in its conquests in science and technology. It has been noted that while some counties dig deep into the ground for their raw materials, Israel has its sights above, investing not in excavation companies but in universities. Israel’s natural resources are neither fossil fuels nor gems, but its enviable pool of human talent and research facilities.

It is staggering that Israel occupies third slot in the world in the number of life science patents filed. Fueling this tiny county’s impressive trajectory in the natural sciences - particularly over the past fifteen years - has been a number of factors. Commensurate with a highly educated work force has been the increasing close collaboration of big business with the research departments at the county’s prestigious universities in what are called technology transfers companies. These companies determine whether discoveries are patentable; they obtain and defend patents, and line up business partners. While the ultimate goal is to ensure that inventions are disseminated to benefit the public good, universities and scientists also stand to reap some financial reward. Some purists have expressed a caveat that too cozy a relationship is “academically unhealthy”, arguing that commercial incentives could ‘infect’ the pure research at the universities. Others advance the view that academic institutions can no longer perform today as Ivory Towers and while Israel’s biotech industry is chronically short of experienced management, technology transfer companies push basic research into drug development.

Whatever the philosophical threads of this debate, in practice the results have proved beneficial to both corporate Israel and to the research universities by leveraging their intellectual capital.

While some might write disparaging articles against Israel, criticize it at world forums or throw rotting fruit at Israel’s representatives at international conferences, hardly a week goes by that one does not read in the media of an Israeli company or university research department having come out with a new innovative discovery or product.

Touching the Entire World

Is it any wonder that behemoths like Motorola and Intel set up their premier research facilities in Israel? Is it surprising that Microsoft’s Bill Gates has been increasingly visiting Israel and that financial giants like Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway would invest $4 billion in Israel’s economy. They have noted what ordinary people around the globe have been slow to recognize – that their lives are being enriched daily by Israeli science and technology.

Early in August 2007 it was announced that Kiryat Ono based GammaCan International, had received Orphan Drug designation for its lead anti-cancer immunology, VitaGam ™, by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of a rare type of metastatic melanoma.

A deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma accounts for some 4% of all skin cancers, but causes, according to the American Cancer Society, approximately 75% of all skin cancer-related deaths. Whether due to the dramatic changing patterns in the world’s climate, the incidence of melanoma has increased more rapidly than any other cancer during the past 10 years. Interestingly, the last drug to treat patients with metastatic melanoma was approved by the FDA over 30 years ago.

Breaking Barriers

While many Israeli biotech companies are in their early stages and still located at university campuses or incubators scattered around the country, some have emerged to become household names.

The best known example is Teva, one of the largest generic pharmaceutical companies in the world. In 2005, annual sales of Copaxone, the first effective peptide drug for multiple sclerosis developed by Teva, broke through the billion dollar barrier.

Procognia Israel Ltd. is a public company that began trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in March. It has developed products to analyze sugars found in various proteins, including biopharmaceuticals, which are considered as next generation products for the global pharmaceutical industry. Their products provide important information for drug manufactures, enabling them to significantly reduce development costs and to shorten the drug development time span. No surprise that in September 2007, they entered into an agreement with Teva for the development of a biopharmaceutical product.

Aqwise, Wise Water Technologies Ltd. recently released its innovative AGAR (Attached Growth Airlift Reactor) system, which by using a thick biofilm on the water in the treatment process can substantially increase plant capacity. Dubbed by major European newspapers, “The Silicon Valley of Water,” Israeli biotech companies provide cutting edge desalinization plants, waste treatment technologies and irrigation products to the entire continent.

In 1996 there were approximately ninety biotech companies operating in Israel, today there are well over 500, running the gamut of technologies from therapeutic pharmaceuticals to diagnostics, bioinformatics and agricultural biotechnology.

“The high level of science taught at the universities has transformed Israeli companies into some of the world's most profitable,” said Ranan Lachman, an investment banker from Oppenheimer who visits Israel frequently to scout for companies.

Toiling to Save the Soil

Biotech is more than pharmaceuticals and genetics:
An Elegant Solution - Common sense.

While much of the buzz these days is on young graduates who want to make thirty million before they turn thirty, there is still room for the ‘old-timers’ to show them a thing or two. Seventy-twoyear- old Moshe Tzori is a farmer with a guilty conscience and a good brain for the natural sciences. Approaching selfimposed retirement, he was plagued with a nagging thought:

“The soil has been good to me my whole life, but have I been good to it?”

Before readers think that Moshe from Moshav Nir Banim in the Northern Negev had been engaged in some nefarious activity to warrant such misgivings about his agrarian past, all he was doing was what most farmers traditionally do - over-irrigate. Why did he think this so bad? For one thing there is the water wastage, but also, no less disturbing, was the pollution that excess water causes. “It spreads harmful insecticides, pesticides and herbicides into our precious underground water supplies.” 

His message was clear: “If we used only the water that was precisely required, our planet and its inhabitants would be healthier.”

Recently tested by the prestigious Volcani Institute, Moshe invented a computerized precision device that prevents inefficient water usage and dramatically reduces pollution. It ‘taps’ into a patch of crops, trees, flowers, plants or grass, and based on information received, makes a precise determination of how much water to release. “The beauty of it,” assures Moshe, “is that it leaves no residual water that contains waste fertilizers to percolate underground.” What’s more, according to the farmer-turned-inventor, “there could be anywhere from 50% - 70% saving in water costs.”

A lawyer in his former South Africa, David Kaplan is today a freelance journalist, writing frequently for The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. He is also Editor of Telfed Magazine, the publication of the South African Zionist Federation of which he served as Chairman 1998-2002.

The pivotal phase in the development came not in the laboratory but under a tree on his moshav. “It’s always been the favorite place for my family to sit.” It was there that his three sons, all highly qualified in the sciences and computer technology prodded him, “Okay, Abba (Dad), what’s your idea? Give it to us, and we will fine tune it with the best technology.”

They did, and the rest is not only history but may also be the future.

So before sprinklers and the garden hose are classified as WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), Moshe’s invention may well join Israel’s impressive track record of innovative contributions to global enrichment.

It’s worth repeating; Israel is not short of ideas.