Pasteur BioTop : an infectious business desire

In December 2000, the Pasteur Institute created Pasteur BioTop, a company incubator, whose purpose is to commercialise the Institute's patents by helping create start-ups. This organisation, which employs very few people, functions very closely with other bodies in the business development and technology transfer department (DARRI in French) which carry out scientific co-ordination, provide a service for patents, inventions and technology transfer, and also handle industrial agreements. The Pasteur Institute automatically holds a stake in the capital of each start-up, but it is the revenues from licenses sold to start-ups which motivate the Institute. In total, of the 16 businesses which BioTop helped to develop, two of them were floated successfully on the stock exchange, a third failed to be floated, and only one went into voluntary liquidation. These surprising outcomes are the result of the incubator's very clear objective of commercialisation, as well as the care BioTop takes in choosing and implementing projects.