Yesterdays news that pharmaceutical-maker Roche is bidding to increase on it's already majority share of San Francisco-based Genentech leads me to wonder at what point do we stop calling a biotech startup - a startup? Genentech employs over 11,000 people - hardly a small company - and is one of Fortune Magazine's "best places to work". While their focus remains on innovation and new drug development, somewhere along the way this company, with lots of help (startup funding?) from the "big guys", has become one of them. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I often get the feeling people equate biomedical research and biotechnology with smaller companies and startups. It's time to change that mentality and accept that biotech is here to stay and that there are now a significant number of large, well-established and financially stable biotech businesses throughout the world.

I was surprised to learn this week that oil giant Royal Dutch Shell owns 50% of one of North America's leaders in biofuel technology. The company owns half of Iogen Energy Corp., based in Ottawa, Canada, a company that is already planning construction of a full-scale production plant for cellulosic ethanol using hay as the feedstock and a patented technology using specialized enzymes. Canadian oil giant Petro-Canada also invests in Iogen.

Iogen was established in the 1970's and quickly built a reputation for producing novel enzymes for commercial and household use. Their website makes the claim that they are on the verge of building the world's first commercial prototype cellulose ethanol plant with plans to license the technology, and further investment by Shell is an important milestone for the company.