The company is under the control of Biomedics (67%), raised according to the company's value of 7 million dollars before the investment is intended for the continued production of human collagen from transgenic plants and the acceleration of business development
The biotechnology company ColePlant succeeded during its first year of development and research in producing human collagen from transgenic plants. The concentration of human protein produced is tens of times higher than the economic viability threshold accepted today. The ColePlant company, founded by Yehuda Tzafrir and Prof. Oded Shusiov from the Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot, operates within the MITB technological incubator in Kiryat Shmona.
The CEO of ColePlant, Dr. Eran Shankar, explains that creating high-quality recombinant human collagen is an extremely complex technological challenge. The company has the knowledge and ability to produce recombinant proteins for sub-sections in the cells of tobacco plants. With the use of synthetic genes, ColPlant believes that it will be able to produce high-quality recombinant human collagen at competitive prices.
Collagen is one of the most important building blocks in the animal world, making up over a third of all the protein in the human body and 75% of skin tissue. Today, collagen is widely used in the world of medicine in many fields such as orthopedics, wound healing, burn treatment and dentistry. Collagen sales for the cosmetics industry alone are about $300 million a year.
The main source of production of collagen in the biotechnology industry today is mostly from animals. The main disadvantages of the collagen produced from animals stem from the fact that it is different from the human protein, it sometimes causes an immune reaction in the patient, does not constitute a natural supportive environment for the cells growing near it and does not encourage the building of normal tissue. This is beyond the danger of transmitting infectious diseases such as "mad cow" disease and more.
Dr. Eran Shankar adds that these shortcomings of collagen produced from animals have led the companies in the world that use collagen to look for alternative materials, including human collagen from various sources. The biotechnological start-up company CoolPlant, from the MITB heating plant in Kiryat Shmona, succeeded in its mission.
The CEO of the MITB incubator Zvika Rubinstein points out that Coleplant is another example of the technological strength of the privatized incubators, which manage to gain a lot of interest from investors in a short period of time. Private, institutional and strategic investments in the incubator companies, such as ColePlant, bring leverage in the business aspect of the companies as well.
