Did you know that innovator Henry Ford designed cars to run on biofuels?

This week, a biofuel first for the airline industry: A Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew between London’s Heathrow and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts!

Biofuels are any fuels made from living things, and we often think of crops like corn as the main source. Earlier this month, Airbus tested another alternative fuel - a synthetic mix of gas-to-liquid.

The babassu tree, native to Brazil, and the coconuts did not compete with staple food sources and came from existing mature plantations. Both products are commonly used in cosmetics and household paper products.

Virgin’s Boeing 747 had one of its four engines connected to an independent biofuel tank that it said could provide 20 percent of the engine’s power. The three other engines were capable of powering the plane on conventional fuel had there been a problem.

This flight marks a vital breakthrough for the entire airline industry. But it will take some time and research before your next commercial flight goes biofuel green.

The technology is still being developed by companies GE and Boeing, but Virgin believes airlines could routinely be flying on plant power within 10 years.

I promised to update you on Innovationedge’s collaboration with Russia’s International Science and Technology Center (ISTC). As you know, we announced our partnership with InnovationPoint to work on a multi-year contract to help some of the most innovative minds in Russia –many of whom are former U.S.S.R. weapons scientists and engineers—to redirect their talents and bring new science and technology capabilities to the United States.

These scientists are highly skilled in biotechnology, agriculture, biomass, health care, nanotechnology and bioengineering. We formally launched our partnership with ISTC in Moscow last November, and have since had several opportunities to advance our mission. To date we have identified and set up meetings with key U.S. partners who could leverage the knowledge and capabilities of our Russian innovators. We’ve also developed marketing materials such as ISTC partnership brochures.

Last month, Innovationedge’s Jeff Lindsay, Director of Solution Development, traveled to Moscow for its Drug Design and Development Conference. The two-day international conference included reps from the World Health Organization, CDC, pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology businesses from Europe, the U.S. and Canada who shared their vision of novel therapeutics to combat emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and cancer.

The symposium was an opportunity for us to get an overview of the biotech work of many Russian scientists. From the perspective of commercializing technologies, most of the technologies shown represented early stage exploratory work. When a biotech company has parallel interests and sees a fit with a particular chemistry being studied, it is a chance for licensing. Some of the capabilities, such as modeling of drug properties for improved activity, may have potential to find a variety of interested partners.

We are exploring specific projects and existing technologies in these areas so that we can make our efforts to find commercial partners. Some of these projects may already have enough data developed to create interest in drug companies that may wish to further explore and develop these exciting opportunities.