BMMD 2005 addressed transition of biomaterials and medical devices from research to business activities

The conference on Biomaterials and Medical Devices 2005: Sciences, Technology and Business was held in Ramat-Gan, Israel, on 17 November, 2005. The conference was hosted and sponsored by the Israeli Materials and Process Society and was also sponsored by Millennium Materials Technologies Funds, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and Tel-Aviv University. An overview of a burgeoning activity in the academia and corporate settings regarding tissue engineering, product status, challenges and prospects was also presented. Copaxone, the first polymer and the active ingredient of a drug, was described as a synthetic, random copolymer of four amino acids-glutamic acid, lysine, alanine, and tyrosine.