Healthcare >> CEO Interviews >> October 17, 2003
HAIM AVIV is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pharmos
Corporation. He is one of the leading figures in Israel's biotechnology
industry. He has founded six prominent companies and provided leadership
to numerous government and industry groups. Companies he has founded
include: Bio-Technology General Corp. (the developer of recombinant DNA-
based products and one of the largest Israeli biotech companies),
Diatech Diagnostics (now merged with Savyon Diagnostics), Herbamed
(nutraceuticals), Pharmos Corp. (CNS drugs), Peptor Ltd. (peptide drugs)
and Predix Pharmaceuticals (computational drug discovery). Dr. Aviv
earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science in
Rehovot, Israel, in 1970. At the US NIH, his post-doctorate work
included the synthesis, for the first time, of cDNA of globin and
Immunoglobulin mRNA. Upon his return to Israel, he held the position of
Assistant Professor in the Department of Virology at the Weizmann
Institute. In that capacity, he successfully cloned the bovine growth
hormone cDNA. Dr. Aviv has served as the Chairman of Israel's National
Biotechnology Committee and is a member of many scientific advisory
boards including the Yeda Research and Development Co. Ltd. at the
Weizmann Institute of Science; the Institute for Applied Biosciences at
the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; and the National Institute for
Biotechnology in the Negev. He has nearly 40 reviewed scientific
publications in professional journals and is the author of the
definition of 'biotechnology' for the Hebrew Encyclopedia. Dr. Aviv is
also the inventor of 20 biotechnology patents. He has been awarded the
Israel Biochemistry Society Prize and a Special Prize of Mifal Hapayis
for Technology. Profile
Corporation and then give us a picture of things as they are now at the
company?
Dr. Aviv: Pharmos has its origins in the 1990s.
