Biotech SF: Green Pacific Biologics

Friday, August 10, 2012

Biofuel startups target revenue

Kiverdi CEO Lisa Dyson.

Biofuel and biochemical startups have wised up about market forces. Many first-generation companies that produced advanced fuels and products shot for the moon, targeting transportation fuel markets that required years of research and development as well as massive scale up and capital. Such companies included South San Francisco-based Solazyme, Emeryville-based Amyris Biotechnologies, and South San Francisco-based LS9 plus other companies such as Kior and Gevo that formed between 2003 and 2006.

Some of my favorite stories.

• "The fight of his life" (2007)

Last year Mike Homer helped raise the money for 2,000 medical research computers. Now researchers are using that equipment in an attempt to save his life.

• "For reporter, CJD is more than a story" (2007)

Seven years ago -- nearly to the day -- my mother died of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease.

• "A son's YouTube plea for Avastin" (2010)

Josh Turnage is your typical teenager, trying to discover what he wants to do in college and with his life. But a 7-minute, 41-second YouTube video he produced about his mother's fight with breast cancer may thrust him into a debate between drug makers and the agency that regulates them.

• "New device could knock out old dialysis technology" (2011)

Shuvo Roy has all the makings for the world's first implantable artificial kidney, thanks to nanotechnology and a web of nationwide collaborations.

All he needs now is $20 million.