For the second year, BioGenerator Ventures is bringing together select St. Louis startups in human health and agriculture with leading investors from across the region and the nation for Startup Connect.
Below is a snapshot of the 12 BioGenerator portfolio companies who will be part of this year’s two-day, invite-only event. The companies range from early to more mature stages, representing innovations from cancer therapies to sunflower-derived rubber to a direct-to-consumer platform that measures exposure to 300+ environmental chemicals,
Amplifi Vascular | Medical Device
- Closed a $7M Series A in 2023
- Raised $10M of an open $12M Bridge financing in 2026
- Earned FDA Breakthrough Device Designation and Category B designation in 2025
- Received FDA IDE approval and began enrolling in AMPLIFI-1 in 2026
BIOIO | Therapeutic
- Produced 12 validated therapeutic programs spanning metabolic, neurological, oncology, and cardiovascular indications
- BIOIO’s lead candidate, BIOIO-1001, is a first-in-class insulin sensitizer for Type II diabetes that has outperformed established therapies, including GLP-1s
- BIOIO has received multiple Missouri Technology Corporation IDEA Fund awards to accelerate its MOAT-based therapeutics for diabetes and aging
Buck Surgical | Medical Device
- Buck Surgical has raised more than $4.2M to bring its microvascular platform through regulatory testing
- It was named a St. Louis Business Journal “Startup to Watch 2026”
Edison Rubber | Agriculture
- Achieved the world’s first sample sheet of sunflower rubber and secured a $1M Department of Defense research contract
- Was selected for the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) program, adding non-dilutive support and industry validation for its sustainable biomaterials work
MaxFi Surgical Simulations | Clinical Tools & Services
- The company has perfused more than 500 cadavers, trained over 10,000 medical professionals across five continents, and tested more than 50 pre-FDA medical devices, establishing a large, real-world track record with academic medical centers, industry partners, and military trauma programs
- In July 2024, MaxFi closed a $2.25M seed funding round to build a state-of-the-art surgical simulation center in St. Louis, which now serves as the only dedicated training lab for surgeons using reanimated cadaver technology
MediBeacon | Medical Device
- MediBeacon has received FDA clearance for its next-generation transdermal GFR monitoring system (as of late 2025) and operates internationally, with additional offices in Mannheim, Germany, serving academic, clinical,and pharmaceutical partners worldwide
- MediBeacon secured significant strategic partnerships and regulatory milestones, including a $30M investment and exclusive commercialization agreement with Huadong Medicine and EU CE Mark certification under the EU MDR for the TGFR Monitor and Reusable Sensor
Omniose | Therapeutic (Vaccine)
- In January 2024, Omniose announced an exclusive scientific collaboration with AstraZeneca, granting the pharma giant access to Omniose’s proprietary bioconjugation platform to explore vaccines against a broad range of bacterial pathogens, including multidrug-resistant superbugs
- Omniose has secured more than $15M in non-dilutive SBIR/STTR grant funding from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to advance its bioconjugate vaccine pipeline
Plastomics | Agriculture
- Plastomics successfully demonstrated its proprietary chloroplast trait delivery platform by engineering soybean chloroplasts to express insect-resistance traits that were previously unattainable using conventional nuclear transformation methods
- The company has raised significant follow-on capital, including a $7.1M Series A round in 2021 and a $5.8M close of its Series B in October 2025, to advance chloroplast engineering in both soybeans and corn toward commercialization
Pranas Neuro | Therapeutic
- Pranas Neuro’s therapeutic approach is based upon landmark scientific discoveries by Jonathan Kipnis at WashU that were published in Nature in 2025 and demonstrated an entirely new way to treat neurodegenerative diseases using guardian peptides
- Alongside Jonathan Kipnis at WashU, the company was co-founded by neurologist Lawrence Steinman at Stanford and biotech entrepreneur Dana Ault-Riché
- Dana Ault-Riché was recruited to join the company full-time as CEO
ProvanAI | Digital Health
- Trained its ovarian cancer risk model on over 220,000 mammograms
- Achieved future cancer risk prediction with 2.3× greater accuracy than traditional questionnaire-based models
- Raised an oversubscribed $1M pre-seed round
Saluna | Agriculture
- Saluna launched a robust industrial-hemp crop-development program in spring 2024, applying modern breeding and plant-science capabilities to create non-THC/CBD, grain-focused hemp varieties suitable for mid-south growing conditions
- The company has progressed from controlled, indoor studies into field trials with Southeast Missouri State University and local growers, testing 20 hemp varieties and using crossbreeding and genetic enhancement to improve crop productivity
Status Health | Consumer Tools & Services
- Status Health is developing an at-home, direct-to-consumer platform measuring 300+ environmental chemicals—such as PFAS, phthalates, and pesticides—using advanced mass spectrometry
- The company’s digital health report will quantify an individual’s chemical burdens, offer personalized reduction plans, and track improvement over time