Israel to build first biotechnology plant producing new AIDS drug

First ever biotechnology plant will be established in Israeli southern city of Eilat to produce a new drug for AIDS disease, Ministry of Economy has said.

The drug, called Gammora is developed by the Israeli pharmaceutical company Zion Medical and has been successfully tested on humans.

During the stages of experiments, it became clear that it is also effective in the treatment of cancerous tumors.

The new drug eliminates the HIV virus-infected cells, as opposed to previous drugs which focused on eliminating the virus itself, and therefore faced the risk of viruses changing and developing resistance.

The Municipality of Eilat allocated an area for establishing a development center to complete the research and experiments, and for the future manufacturing plant.

A total of 30 million U.S. dollars will be invested in the development center, of which 9 million dollars will be allocated by the ministry.

The plant will cost another 90 million dollars.