St. Louis, Missouri, USA
January 28, 2021
Pluton Biosciences started with a mission to bring new natural products to market in order to make the world a more sustainable place. As Barry Goldberg, PhD, chief science officer at Pluton Biosciences notes, “The microbial world has a lot to teach us beyond just providing antibiotics. It’s a natural resource that can be used to create a whole new area of technology to create sustainable natural products.”
Barry has worked in agtech since the 1990s, starting at Monsanto after doing his postdoctoral work at Washington University. In 2019 he moved from Indigo Ag to Pluton Biosciences to pursue his work with micro-biomes. Longtime friend Charlie Walch helped guide Pluton Biosciences through the early stages of the starting the company.
“As sequencing technology increased its ability to explore micro-biomes it opened up a whole new world of biodiversity we knew nothing about,” Barry remarked. With the amount of diversity in microbes Barry knew there had to be better ways to understand microbes and apply them in an industrial sense.
From a business standpoint, discovering new ways to make microbes create sustainable natural projects was huge. Synthetic chemistry has been used in agriculture so long and as Charlie Walch, Chief Executive Officer at Pluton Biosciences noted, “they’re reaching effectiveness as well as causing environmental harm… going green is important and microbes hold that secret.” Currently the biggest bio-mining companies are in antibiotics, but bringing that practice to agriculture opened a world of possibilities.
Pluton Biosciences is dedicated to exploring those possibilities. Their focus is on replacing the synthetic chemicals used for pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Replacing chemical pesticides with microbes is a lofty goal, but it’s also what drew Barry and Charlie to the Wells Fargo IN2 program.
Barry and Charlie knew they wanted to work with the Danforth Center to identify active tractions in microbes. The company had already identified microbes that killed mosquitoes in a first concept, but needed help to identify the secondary traction in the microbes. They knew that the Center’s Vice President for Research, Toni Kutchan, PhD, was an expert at identifying secondary metabolites in plants and decided to pursue her help doing the same with their microbes through IN2.
Where Toni’s methods are most helpful, Charlie noted, is “Turning different microbes into safe and effective natural products.” Pluton Biosciences’ innovation engine works by identifying how microbes work first, having access to Danforth’s expertise allows them to figure out how to turn that into a product successfully.
When COVID-19 hit, Pluton Biosciences ordered a stay home order to their employees even before the rest of the county did. “On one level it’s scary running an essential business during this time, you’re afraid your team could get sick and that could sideline you, but on the other had we no longer have to explain to investors that microbes are biology’s single most powerful force because of the virus,” said Charlie. The team is back in the lab now and with greater attention to social distancing and other safety precautions, Pluton Biosciences has been growing as a company, despite the pandemic. Balancing running the business and advancing the science while still working to raise funds has been difficult, but Charlie and Barry are thankful to be able to work near the Danforth Center in their home town.
Learn more about the Danforth Center's partnership with the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator.
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