The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) announced it’s latest cohort. Those companies are:
- Cytophage Technologies, Winnepeg, Manitoba. Using synthetic biology to make evolved viruses to fight bacteria.
- Edison Agrosciences, St. Louis, MO. Making rubber out of sunflowers.
- Peptyde Bio, St. Louis, MO. Developing natural biofungicides from plant antimicrobial peptides.
- Robigo, Cambridge, MA. Creating biopesticides that specifically target pathogenic bacteria.
- Synthetic Vector Designs, St. Louis MO. Developing novel methods to boost plant cell disease control.
The companies get up to $250,000 in non-dilutive funding to conduct technical work at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. They’ll also get introductions to industry experts, investors, incubators, accelerators and university programs.
IN2 targets companies with very early-stage technologies, and part of the award fuels collaborative research with scientists at the Danforth Center aimed at validating their technology. This incubation project is a partnership between the philanthropic Wells Fargo Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The seven year old program took on agriculture as a focus and pulled in the Danforth Center as a program partner.
It has also thrown some money at a couple St. Louis organizations that feed tiny startups to the IN2 program: BioSTL and the Yield Lab Institute, which offer mentorship and entrepreneur support.
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