(St. Louis Public Radio) AgTech Startups See St. Louis as a Plant Science Powerhouse and are Moving in
April 24, 2025
Nearly two years after the 39 North AgTech Innovation District formally became an independent nonprofit, the district is beginning to bolster and attract related startups to the St. Louis region.
Companies including Cquesta, EpiCrop Technologies and EpiMethyl Analytics have already taken up space within the 600-acre innovation district, with many more expressing interest in its offerings, said 39North Executive Director Emily Lohse-Busch.
A handful of reasons make St. Louis an attractive place to relocate to, said Sally Mackenzie, chief science officer for EpiCrop Technologies and EpiMethyl Analytics, who moved to the region last June from Penn State University.
Mackenzie said she found the St. Louis region attractive to relocate to because of how quickly operations could get up and running. For example, she said she’s using some of Danforth’s plant growth facilities while EpiCrop (a subsidiary of EpiMethyl Analytics) establishes its own in the coming years, allowing it to develop and launch its technology more quickly.
This also means there is good opportunity and support for homegrown startup companies in the AgTech space.
Metablify, comes from a breakthrough by researchers at the Danforth Plant Science Center to better analyze massive numbers of liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LC-MS) outputs. LC-MS is an analytical chemistry tool that can identify the chemical compounds in a specific mixture, but current software is limited by how many of these results it can handle, said Metablify President and CEO Mike Bielski.
He said the company, which is spinning out of the Danforth Center via the Danforth Technology Co., is already conducting pilots that are “going really, really well.”
This is Bielski’s second time becoming involved with a St. Louis-based AgTech company, after co-founding NewLeaf Symbiotics more than a decade ago.
“All of the talent that’s clustered here, the support that [the] Danforth [Center] is providing; as an entrepreneur who can work anywhere, those things are very exciting,” he said. “The support and the outreach has been really tremendous, and a big part of why this is my second company [in St. Louis].”