ABOUT SPEARHEAD BIO
OUR STORY
Born from a breakthrough in plant science.
Spearhead Bio grew from pioneering research at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and a bold idea: harness transposable elements to enable the precise insertion of large DNA sequences.
The scientific insight
A different way of looking at plant DNA
At the Danforth Center, Dr. Keith Slotkin and the Slotkin Lab recognized that transposable elements, natural DNA movers, could become powerful genome-engineering tools. Their insight offered a new solution to a challenge that CRISPR cutting alone did not solve: the precise insertion of large DNA sequences.
From Big Ideas to breakthrough
Published in Nature.
After winning the Danforth Center’s 2019 Big Ideas 2.0 competition, the team advanced its idea through four proof-of-concept grants and NSF research funding. The resulting TATSI system was published in Nature in 2024, demonstrating targeted DNA insertion in Arabidopsis and soybean.
From discovery to company
Breakthrough science becomes Spearhead Bio.
Danforth Technology Company helped move the technology beyond the lab through intellectual property development, licensing, seed financing, and early management.
In 2025, Spearhead Bio launched to advance this scientific breakthrough into a new platform for crop genome engineering.