ZICHRON YA'AKOV, Israel - Biotechnology last week received national status by the government. Prof. Michel Revel, chairman of National Biotechnology Committee, told BioWorld International that the Knesset Ministerial Committee for Science and Technology, headed by Minister of Science, Culture and Sport Matan Vilna'i, decided to designate biotechnology with national priority status.

Revel said that the chief scientists of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (Carmel Varnia) and of the Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport - Carmel Varnia and Hagit Messer-Yaron, respectively - had met in what he termed "an extraordinary session" and "agreed that more government involvement is needed to take advantage of the big advances in Israeli medical technology."

Revel said, "What is missing to mobilize the strong academic research careers in life science is funding for National Infrastructure Centers in bioinformatics, transgenics, human genome project, and proteomics, which now "subsist on only $4 million per year when they need to increase their budgets by tenfold."

Responding to criticism raised in the local press by Ernst & Young's Israeli affiliate, Kost Forer and Gabbay, that Israeli biotechnology is not keeping pace with growth in Western Europe and the U.S., in part due to the absence of government investment and managerial staff, Revel agreed that the government must make a bigger effort to help the sector, but said that a snapshot (one quarter) view is hardly an accurate indicator of long-term trends.

In fact, Revel said, "per capita, venture capital investment and the actual achievements in the biotech sector are better in Israel than in Europe." He said that for all of Europe, 60 products are cited as approaching commercialization in clinical trials -which would be the equivalent of just 1.2 products for Israel, whereas "there are at least 10 products at this advanced stage."

He said that the government not only has agreed to invest more, but is beginning to do so to bridge the gap between initial academic research and the demonstration of the value of the product to attract commercial interest.

Paul Singer, acting chairman of the steering committee of ISERD, the Israeli Directorate for the Fifth Framework Program of the European Union, cites "the extraordinary achievements" that are being made by Israel's participation in the program. He noted R&D grants for Israeli researchers have reached about Euro 80 million - distributed between the academic field and industry and Israeli and European partners. The biotech program totaled 26 projects with Israeli participation, with a total funding of EUR5 million, and the biomed program totaled 19 projects with Israeli participation and Israelis funded at EUR3.1 million.