The 39 North innovation district had an impressive showing with three companies selected as the top startups to watch in 2023. Impetus Agriculture and Solis Agrosciences, two companies at the Helix Center Incubator, and Peptyde Bio, a startup founded by the Danforth Technology Company, were among nine companies chosen by the St. Louis INNO and St. Louis Business Journal editorial teams for notching major milestones. They’ve raised funding, hired staff and landed big customers. These cutting-edge 39 North startups expect to surpass even more landmarks in 2023.
Peptyde Bio
In 2022, Peptyde Bio was launched to develop biofungicides following decades of research at the Danforth Plant Science Center. Fungicides, which protect crops from disease, are increasingly important; as the world population grows, so does the need to produce food. Preventing the staggering loss that can occur when crops succumb to disease is key to ensuring enough yield to nourish everyone on Earth. Unfortunately, traditional synthetic fungicides can have detrimental effects on the environment, but natural biofungicides offer an effective, sustainable alternative. Peptyde Bio is making this possible by discovering the beneficial anti-microbial peptides that plants produce naturally and designing them for application in the field. Peptyde Bio hopes their products will help ease the environmental burden of traditional fungicides, and they are already well on their way — in November 2022, they officially closed an oversubscribed $1.2 million pre-seed funding round.
Solis Agrosciences
Solis Agrosciences is a startup that grew out of BioGenerator to aid companies in conducting plant science research. Their Plant Pipeline as a Service assists companies with gene editing, greenhouse operation, plant analysis and more. The need for a service provider like Solis became clear when Plastomics, another company in the 39 North innovation district, was receiving such a high number of requests for plant research assistance that they were unable to accommodate the demand while still working towards their own mission to develop chloroplast transformation technology. Solis spun out of Plastomics to fulfill this need, and its founders see enormous potential to use their technology to help solve some of the greatest global challenges in plant science and agriculture. The company has grown rapidly since its launch in May 2022 and is already generating revenue in its first year of operation.
Impetus Agriculture
Impetus Agriculture, cofounded by BioGenerator, the Yield Lab, and seed supplier KWS, is working to develop highly effective insect control products. If successful, Impetus could potentially prevent the $70 billion loss farmers endure every year as a result of crop pests, which, much like the fungal diseases that Peptyde Bio seeks to resist, are a major threat to food security. Impetus’ goal is to strengthen existing protein technology used in previous pesticides, creating a product that is more effective at controlling unwanted insects. This past year, the company conducted experiments that saw its technology killing more pests at a faster pace than existing pesticides. These promising results led Impetus to raise new funding, hire staff and set up a laboratory in 39 North at the Helix Center Incubator. Impetus has testing agreements in place with three different agriculture entities and an undisclosed global agriculture firm and aims to secure two more collaborations this year.
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