The Link Between Academia and Industry

Since the dawn of the scientific revolution, the worlds of technology and science have been moving forward, thanks to two different engines: academic institutions and industrial corporations. In leading universities and groundbreaking companies, investment in research and development gives rise to a multitude of products, technologies and ideas that change our lives and the world in which we live in for the better. Naturally, the relationship between academia and the economic system is complex. Where academia sees purely basic research, commercial companies tend to see first and foremost the practical and applicative side.

The mission of Yeda, the technology transfer company at the Weizmann Institute of Science, is to bridge the gap between these two parallel worlds. The company is engaged in commercializing the Institute's scientific developments and creating commercial collaborations that will enable the translation of the Institute's researchers' findings into useful products and technologies that can achieve business success.

Dr. Opher Shapira has headed Yeda for the past three years. He's a physicist by training and had a long career in business and startups. Among others, he founded and managed various companies including a startup in the field of medical devices and a company that developed a product for diagnosing cancer. "Throughout my career, I've been involved in the transition between a scientific idea and a business company," he says. "For me, the decision to join the Weizmann Institute was self-evident. First and foremost, the Institute is a leading organization with countless fascinating developments, but the decision also has a Zionist aspect. The mission of Yeda is essentially Zionist - to help build new companies and promote Israeli innovation."

Companies born out of ideas
Yeda (its full name is Yeda - Research and Development Company) was established at the end of the 1950s. The company is greatly assisted by its Board of Directors, which consists of Institute staff and leading industry and venture capitalists and is headed by the Vice President for Innovation of the Weizmann Institute, Prof. Irit Sagi. "In essence, the Weizmann Institute is a research institute, not a university," Shapira explains. "The Weizmann Institute of Science offers graduate studies in biology, biochemistry, mathematics and computer science, physics and chemistry. The core of its activity is focused on what is known as basic science, which is motivated by curiosity to investigate fundamental questions without practical purpose and without being given a particular direction.

"And yet, the decision to establish Yeda was made at a very early stage in the history of the Institute. It was a groundbreaking decision. Yeda is the second company of its kind in the world. Today, almost all of the leading academic institutions worldwide are heavily engaged in commercializing academic knowledge, but the Weizmann Institute and Yeda have been trailblazers in this field.

"The company team comes into the picture when, as part of the scientific work at the Weizmann Institute, ideas arise that may have commercial value, whether they can be protected by a patent or not. "At the initial stage, we protect the technology and apply for a patent whenever the researchers who came up with the idea are the inventors. Yeda, as the technology transfer company holds the right to commercialize the development as it sees fit. Our mission is to determine whether the idea can generate revenue for the Institute and to disseminate technologies developed at the Weizmann Institute for the benefit of humanity."

"In the early days of the company, the conventional thinking was that Yeda needed to find a large company that would commercialize the idea in exchange for a percentage of its revenue," Shapira says. "The changes that the industry has undergone have caused us to change the model and to focus on the establishment of independent startups that are born out of the ideas developed at the Institute."

As of 2023, more than 50 companies have been founded and still operate today, through the activities of the Weizmann Institute and Yeda. Since 1959, Yeda has led to the registration of over 3,470 different patent families and the development of a variety of life-saving drugs. The best-known drug developed based on research conducted at the Weizmann Institute in the late 1960s is Copaxone for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. This groundbreaking drug was developed by Teva, and it is considered by many to be one of the great achievements of the Israeli pharmaceutical company.

"Yeda is a partner in seven life-saving drugs based on Weizmann Institute technology," says Shapira. "In addition, the company has helped bring prominent developments in various fields to the commercial market, such as the protection of internet communications. Beyond worldwide sales, Yeda's most important achievement has been the creation of a mechanism that makes it possible to turn scientific discoveries into life-saving drugs or developments that change the world."

National importance
According to Shapira, it is precisely the fact that academia is not driven by commercial motives that leads to its research success. "It's very important to preserve the researchers' academic freedom", he stresses. "When researchers conduct research freely, without worrying about money issues, they make really great discoveries. Many of the useful products we encounter in our daily lives were born as a result of years of academic research. In other words, the research itself does not have to take into account future commercial considerations."

"Researchers in academia explore the things that interest them," Shapira explains. "The reason that the researcher discovers a chemical, a biological substance or a technological algorithm is the scientific curiosity in the mechanism behind it. As far as the researcher is concerned, as soon as he figures out the mechanism, his work is finished. Most researchers are not interested in the impact of their discoveries on the general public. Since many of these inventions can create great value for many people, the activity of a company like Yeda which has been connecting scientific discoveries to the market, is highly important."

As noted, Dr. Opher Shapira also stresses the national importance of a technology transfer company, which serves as a bridge between industry and academia. "In a country like ours, there is added value in creating jobs, establishing startups and setting up economic collaborations. Commercial progress also contributes to the level of interest in research and to university budgets and attracts a new generation of researchers to academia. In other words, when you help technology expand beyond the scientific sphere, you gain widespread public interest. Take the US space program, for example. Ostensibly, stellar exploration doesn't immediately improve our lives on Earth, but investing in the space program has brought enormous benefits. The study of physics has come a long way because at the time physicists were considered cultural heroes. It is impossible to know where the shockwaves of the research will stop. The scotch fasteners on our clothes, shoes and bags are based on the astronauts' spacesuits."

Bridging the gap
Because of the vast differences between practices in academia and the commercial world, a technology transfer company faces significant challenges. "The biggest challenge is the difficulty in predicting the future," Shapira states. "It's very difficult to know what will work and what won't, so our goal is to give each technology the best opportunity. A lot of our ideas go to existing companies which are responsible for developing them using their systems. Often, we hold ideas for which there is no immediate demand in the market as we believe that in the future they may stir interest. Scientific research ends at a relatively early stage, so we need to bridge the gap between initial research and industry needs. In these situations, our strategy at Yeda is to find entrepreneurs, connect them to investments and establish startups ourselves that will advance the technology."

To help these startups grow, the Weizmann Institute and Yeda set up an entrepreneurship accelerator called WIN (Weizmann Innovation Nest). "We use the means at our disposal and our connections with investors to help these companies move forward," Shapira says. "In addition, the Weizmann Institute has established an internal unit named Bina to promote groundbreaking early-stage research with an applied potential. Bina is a scientific academic unit available to Institute researchers to assist them in implementing scientific proof of feasibility in accordance with industry standards using industry experts, and in understanding the scientific challenges in industry. We have excellent connections with venture capital funds and an outstanding department dealing with patents and intellectual property. Indeed, the Weizmann Institute has built a whole mechanism, starting with an entity that supports researchers and ending with our entrepreneurship accelerator, which is capable of advancing an idea through all stages of its life cycle, from the researcher's initial concept to the success of a new startup company."

Another significant task of Yeda is the protection of the intellectual property. "The tendency of researchers is to publish as soon as possible, which challenges the patent filing strategy.", says Dr. Shapira. "In the world of research, scientific publications are the currency, so researchers are quick to publish their work in academic journals. A technology transfer company is here to serve researchers, not the other way around. Therefore, we will never stand in the way of a researcher who wants to publish his discovery, but we have a great responsibility to protect the invention by legal means and through patent registration. This is another significant gap between academia and industry, where everyone keeps their cards close to their chest."

The future of technology, concludes Dr. Opher Shapira, is already under development at the Weizmann Institute of Science. "We are currently encountering many fascinating developments that will affect the world in the future, such as discoveries in genetics, Agritech and Foodtech, big data and artificial intelligence (AI). The intersection of the worlds of AI with biology is unprecedented: fields such as synthetic biology are growing rapidly before our eyes. Inventions in the fields of agriculture and food – cultured meat and natural food coloring – are being studied. Two companies have emerged from the Weizmann Institute from research in the field of quantum computing. All these and more are new fields of technology that are already finding their way to the market."

In collaboration with Yeda