The Israeli life science industry is young, growing and exuberant. Of the existing 466 companies, 81% were founded during the last decade. A closer look reveals that an amazing 52% of the industry was established in the last five years. 88 companies were established prior to 1994, with the oldest one, Teva Pharmaceutical, founded in 1901. From 1994 to 2000, the industry experienced significant annual growth equaling 24%. In 1994, the life science industry grew by 14 companies while in 2000 the industry saw its number increase by an additional 50 companies. In total, the industry grew by an additional 185 companies in the 1994-2000 period. In the past five years, industry growth has remained stable with approximately 46-50 new companies, annually. Altogether, the industry experienced a 16.4% compounded annual growth in the decade of 1994-2004.
80% of the companies were created within the last decade. Yet, 41% or 189 companies are revenue generating entities. Of those, 77 companies are mature and were created prior to 1994. More impressive is the fact that 38 companies or 20% of all revenue producing companies were established within the last five years. Approximately 30% of the life science industry or 131 companies are at the seed stage, 10% or 46 companies are at the preclinical stage and 89 or 20% of the companies are at the clinical stage.
The Israeli industry focus is on unique opportunities of major diseases for which existing therapies are largely ineffective. Thus many Israeli companies are working on treatments for cardiovascular and peripheral vascular disease (67 companies), oncology (35), neurodegenerative disease (25), and other age related diseases such as ophthalmic and orthopedic (15).
The Israeli life science industry is heavily biased towards the medical device sector, with approximately 250 companies or 54% of the total. Biotech is the second largest sector with 96 companies or 21% and parmaceutical is the third with 60 companies or 13% of all life science companies operated in Israel. Presently, Agbiotech is poorly represented in the database with only 18 companies or 4% of the total.
Pharmaceutical is the third sector with 60 companies. Although smaller in number of companies, it is by far the largest and most established sector in the Israeli Life sciences industry. It is the largest revenue producer with 23 companies such as Teva, Agis, Taro and Dexcel Pharma, which are also the largest employers in the Israeli industry. These companies are generally mature and focus their business on generic drugs. Concurrently, 34 pharmaceutical companies are younger and small with less than 10 employees. Although Israel's Pharma companies are well known for their generic drug emphasis, 28% of the sector is involved in the development of "New Chemical Entity-NCE". Several others are involved in the development of drug delivery and vaccines while others are focusing on the development of new drug using natural compounds.
The Israeli Life Science industry employs an estimated 25,200 individuals in 466 companies. Of those, 82% or 20,770 employees work in 52 companies with over 50 employees each. The largest employer is the pharmaceutical sector with 16,500 employees. Teva Pharmaceuticals employs over 11,000 people while Agis employs over 2,000. It is important to note that an estimated 30% of Teva's and Agis' employees are international employees that work outside of Israel. On the other extreme there are the 273 companies or 59% of all Life Sciences companies that employ between 1-10 workers or 1,365 employees.