REBIF & COPAXONE: From new ideas to Nobel prizes, Israeli university research forges ahead
[PHOTO: Professors Aaron Ciechanover, 57, (right) and Avram Hershko, 67, in their lab at the Technion-Israeli Institute in Haifa.]
If the high tech and biotech industries are the engines that have been driving the Israeli economy over the past five years, it is the nation's universities that have provided the fuel: brainpower.

Behind nearly every Israeli business success story is an idea which born in a laboratory in one of the country's impressive institutions of higher learning.

Innovation at Israeli universities, of course, is nothing new. But what has rapidly improved has been the journey from university to the marketplace. Once a rough and rocky path filled with obstacles, the road to commercialization has become smoother and more efficient, thanks to the level of assistance and support provided by the universities themselves.

The past five years has seen a blossoming and expansion of what are known as technology transfer companies: businesses housed on campus that are devoted to taking the products of the university's minds, presenting them to the business world, and guaranteeing, with its proactive role, that the universities benefit financially from the ideas that they foster.

Israel's best-known technology transfer company, admired and imitated around the world, is the Weizmann Institute's Yeda Research and Development.

"In all, Weizmann scientists have been responsible for well over 1,000 registered patents, many of which have been developed commercially.

Among its licenses are two of the four drugs used in the United States and worldwide to treat multiple sclerosis - Copaxone made by Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals, whose annual sales top $360 million, and Rebif, made by Ares Serono of Switzerland and developed by its subsidiary Interpharm, whose sales exceed $370 million. "