Up to 40 early-stage drug-development companies will be incubated over the next eight years at Israel’s latest biotechnology accelerator, FutuRx, an all-star enterprise backed by OrbiMed Israel Partners, Johnson & Johnson and Takeda Ventures with the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) in Israel’s Ministry of Economy. The 1,200-square-meter facility with fully equipped labs was opened earlier this year at the Weizmann Science Park in Ness Ziona, near the world-renowned Weizmann Institute of Science.

The OCS has supported selected biotech startups since 1991, and has been finding new avenues for nurturing promising but high-risk projects that have trouble raising money in the private sector, says Yossi Smoller, head of the OCS Technology Incubator Program. Open competitions were held to launch FutuRx as well as Inspire Healthcare Innovations, a joint venture between Holland’s Philips Healthcare and Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals to advance medical innovations and technologies; and Food-Tech Hub, an initiative of The Strauss Group to develop new approaches in basic foodstuffs, agricultural techniques, production and packaging.

The expectation is that after the incubator term, startups will be positioned to raise money from the private sector and operate on their own. So far, FutuRx has chosen two startups from among 200 proposals. One is developing a technology to treat a juvenile disease of the central nervous system; the other is working on a cancer drug that blocks a specific protein. Up to six more projects are to be approved through the second quarter of 2015. (via Israel21c)

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