Drug companies spent about NIS 255 million on clinical testing at Israeli hospitals in 2007, or 26% more than in 2006 and 53% more than in 2004. The figures are from a Health Ministry report obtained recently by TheMarker.
One man, Prof. Ron Dagan, singlehandedly brought in NIS 34 million for medical research to Be'er Sheva's Soroka Medical Center. Dagan is professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the city's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and director of the pediatric infectious disease unit at Soroka.
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With NIS 54 million for research in 2007, Petah Tikva's Beilinson Hospital, Rabin Medical Center is the brightest star in the local medical research funding firmament. The award for most generous big pharm firm is Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, with NIS 33.4 million.
The research work of Dagan, the current president of the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases, focuses on developing a vaccine against pneumococcus, considered the deadliest bacteria in the world for children under the age of 5. It causes meningitis and pneumonia, among other diseases, and is responsible for the deaths of about 800,000 children throughout the world every year.
"One of the advantages of clinical research on such a large scale is that 1,000 children received the vaccine [against pneumococcus], which is not part of the [subsidized] basket of immunizations and is expensive," Dagan said. Ze'ev Zelig, chairman of Pharm-Israel - the umbrella organization of local subsidiaries of multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers - is bullish on Israeli privately funded research.
"The rise in investment over the years is a positive step," Zelig says. "There's no doubt that the industry has contributed to the hospitals' abilities to invest in developing their internal resources in clinical trials and put them on the scale of the best international medical centers that engage in medical research." Zelig points to the ancillary economic benefits to the hospitals that derive from the research dollars.
"As soon as a patient enters a clinical trial paid for by the drug company there's no need to prescribe additional medicines, and the state saves money," Zelig notes. In addition, he said, hospitals are saved the costs of laboratory tests, X-rays, MRIs and other diagnostic measures, which the drug companies pay for as part of the trial.
Zelig hints at the obstacles to conducting more drug trials here. "We would be happy to expand the number and the scope of the clinical trials performed in Israel, with help from the Health Ministry in obtaining permits from the Helsinki Committees" which approve and monitor all clinical trials.
The Health Ministry report reflects only the amounts paid by the drug manufacturers to hospitals for the clinical trials on their premises. They include the cost of conducting the studies and the hospitals' profit. But they do not reflect the full cost to the pharmaceutical companies of clinical trials. The cost of the drugs themselves, the logistics involved, the statistical processing - all these expenses are not in the report, because the hospitals don't see them. This means that the real cost to the pharm firms of carrying out clinical research in Israel is much higher - according to a senior industry source, about $300 million a year. The reports also omits the number of participants in each trial, making it impossible to figure out the economic benefit to the companies of conducting clinical trials in Israel.
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