Photograph by David Torrence
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center has a glittering home in Creve Coeur, more than 100 highly regarded scientists on staff and an ambitious plan to "improve the human condition" worldwide. As the well-funded institute marks its 10th year of existence, Chris Birk examines what it's accomplished, what challenges it faces and which of its goals have yet to be realized
A man of science and structure, Dr. Thomas Smith was their kind of guy. Ten years ago, enveloped in a world of tenure and graduate students and lab research, the prominent Purdue structural biologist received a risky proposition that gave him pause. A plant science institute that at the time existed only on paper had come calling with an offer: Leave the cocoon of academia, come do fundamental, no-frills science with us and, if it all goes right, reshape the lives of millions of people.
For Smith, an expert in plant viruses, the invitation from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center promised a life of daily hands-on science. It also meant the end of guaranteed work, the prospect of bitter fights for federal research funding and the uncertainty surrounding a fledgling research center with promising resources but no reputation.
"It was a risk," Smith says now from his multimillion-dollar lab at the Danforth Center in Creve Coeur, where he does research to protect the global food supply. "But at the end of the day, the question is 'Do you have faith in your research activities, in what you do and how hard you're willing to work to take a chance on a brand-new institution?'
"It was a little bit scary," he continues, adding, "If you don't drown, you learn how to swim."
A decade after that initial call, both Smith and the Danforth Center are charting new waters.
Now the nation's largest independent research institute focused on plant science, the Danforth Center has solidified St. Louis' standing as the epicenter of plant biotechnology. The vision of Washington University chancellor emeritus Dr. William H. Danforth, the facility has sought to crystallize the region's scientific and research bases in a single entity with a mission it defines this way: improving the human condition by understanding how plants grow and develop, how they resist disease and drought and, ultimately, how they can be altered or adapted to suit the needs of an increasingly fragile planet.
The not-for-profit center named for Danforth's late father has become a beacon of innovation, its potential jaw-dropping. The work so far has produced some promising but preliminary results:
- Scientists from the Danforth Center and partner institutions Washington University and Monsanto had a hand in uncovering the genetic sequence for corn, which last winter joined rice as the only other crop with a complete genetic map. The decoding could lead to the development of healthier corn varieties that increase yield, resist drought and disease, and ultimately minimize economic and environmental barriers to nourishing the world's neediest.
- A handful of Danforth Center researchers are in the final three years of a $3.3 million project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to genetically increase the nutritional value of cassava, a staple crop for 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.
- On the heels of promising work on cassava, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation gave the Danforth Center more than $3 million last year to strengthen the nutritional value and virus resistance of sweet potatoes in Africa — research that may hold the key to boosting vitamin and protein levels in staple crops for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
- Center scientists are also making strides toward new virus-resistant plants, allergen-free soybeans and the creation of crops with stronger but less dense stalks that can be used to produce biofuels with less waste.
At this point, the reputation, respect and research dollars are all there. It'll soon be time to start evaluating the results. But measuring scientific success during any 10-year span can be a dubious exercise, especially during an enterprise's start-up phase. The jump from test-tube triumph to field trials is monumental, and breakthroughs in a lab can crumble in real-world conditions.
For the Danforth Center, field tests on genetically modified crops such as soybeans and cassava and scientific publications during the next two years will make the case for a host of possible breakthroughs, from planting those healthier and more efficient crops in developing countries to using plant oils to ease the First World's reliance on petroleum.
Peering back over the first 10 years, many Danforth Center stakeholders and observers say building a world-class research institute from the ground up stands as achievement enough. It's the next two to three decades that will likely determine whether the center has a chance of living up to its mission.
"I see this as a great human endeavor," Danforth says. "This is going to be exciting for the next 50 years at least. We are so lucky, so fortunate to be able to work on something that in my view is important for the world and for future generations. It's also a benefit to our hometown ... I love that opportunity to combine those two efforts."
The Danforth Center's sparkling, state-of-the-art facility at North Warson Road and Olive Boulevard houses 170 scientists and another 30 full-time staffers. Scientists from across the world funnel into the sun-streaked, $75 million building for a few weeks of research and study or in search of a permanent hook for that white lab coat.
"The Donald Danforth Center is viewed as a leader in the sciences," says Sharon Bomer Lauritsen, executive vice president for food and agriculture for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, an international biotech lobbying group based in Washington, D.C. "St. Louis and that area is an important center for agricultural biotechnology. What I find exciting is that they're taking those innovative advances, educating various publics and focusing on transforming technology to developing countries."
Not everyone shares this excitement. While genetically manipulated crops have been widely adopted by U.S. farmers since their introduction in the mid-1990s — today, about 90 percent of the soybeans and 50 percent of the corn grown in this country feature GM traits like resistance to herbicides and insecticides — the issue is not without controversy in this country; abroad, it can be outright volatile.
In 2004, biotech companies including St. Louis–based Monsanto walked away from British field trials after threatened boycotts and consumer unrest. Swaths of land across Europe and throughout parts of Canada, Australia and elsewhere have been deemed "GM-free" by elected officials and community leaders. Critics of genetically modified foods — tagged as "Frankenfoods" in the 1990s, a moniker the industry is still working to shake — often point to uncertainty as their biggest concern. It is unclear what possible long-term impacts the planting of millions of acres of genetically manipulated seeds might have. There's lingering concern among critics that modified genes could mutate or jump from a GM field to a non-modified patch of soybeans or cassava, wreaking untold havoc on untested crops. The same goes for the possibility that scientifically created resistance might lead to new, stronger viruses intent on breaking through the biotech barrier sheathing modified plants such as cotton or corn.
"We're very much concerned by the much-exaggerated hype about genetic engineering and agricultural biotechnology," says Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C.–based environmental advocacy group and long-time biotech critic. "We often find unsupportable claims about the technology and often fabrications. I think it's mostly public relations. People don't get very excited about the idea of engineering crops that allow you to spray herbicides on them. Whereas, nutritional enhancement, drought tolerance, that all sounds real good and positive — wonderful traits that have been promised for 20 years now and still haven't come to pass."
These concerns notwithstanding, the Danforth Center considers itself well-positioned to proceed with its current projects and long-range plans. Its funding this year will top $10.2 million, exceeding goals set four years ago by 15 percent. The average grant and contract at the center is about $650,000 per lead scientist, 45 percent higher than the national average at similar research institutions, according to Sam Fiorello, the center's chief operating officer.
Patents, grants and formal research publications are all up. Fortune 500 companies from the food and human-health industries have been calling in search of sustainable plant biotech solutions. The path is clearing.
"This is really just the beginning of the next three or four decades of agricultural innovations that are literally going to change how we grow crops and produce foods," says Dr. Robert T. Fraley, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Monsanto and a pioneering plant biologist who sits on the center's Friends Committee.
"If you look at the last 10 years broadly," he says, "from the impact the science has had globally and regionally, what it's meant, I think it has put St. Louis and this region on the global map in terms of the opportunity to be real players in the future of securing foods, feed and fuel for the world."
The center's formation represented the fruits of Danforth's desire to capitalize on the city's unique scientific position and infrastructure: Seventy-five percent of the country's farm production occurs within a 500-mile radius of St. Louis; meanwhile, the city boasts some significant scientific heavyweights, from Washington University and Monsanto to the Missouri Botanical Garden.
A vision began to take shape in the mid-1990s after discussions among Danforth, MoBot director Dr. Peter Raven and Dr. Virginia Weldon, a former Washington University professor and Monsanto executive. While cities like Boston and San Francisco blossomed as centers for biomedical research and technology, St. Louis found itself perfectly suited to become the Silicon Valley of the plant science world. Getting there required a singular structure and vision.
"The idea was to take these regional strengths and leverage them to create something that was special and best in the world, something in which the whole would be worth more than the sum of the parts," says Fiorello, who helped convince his then-employer, Monsanto, to donate $50 million to help start the Danforth Center.
That gift was bolstered by a $60 million contribution from the Danforth Foundation and $25 million in tax credits from the Missouri Development Finance Board. In all, the center's stakeholders gathered more than $146 million in initial commitments.
Today, St. Louis continues to strive to become the hub of a Midwestern BioBelt, part of a multiheaded branding effort to make plant biotechnology the region's dominant industry. The Danforth Center, along with its partner institutions — Washington University, MoBot, the University of Illinois, Purdue University and the University of Missouri — remains a key player in the movement.
"From a scientific point of view, adding the Danforth Center to the mix of wonderful institutions that were already here has really made St. Louis a center of the plant sciences," Raven says. "You really do have a powerhouse."
Danforth and his colleagues saw the center as both scientific innovator and economic generator. Both roles are on the verge of a vetting.
Venture capital and investment have increased noticeably since its inception, but the center — tied down at this point by the pace of scientific discovery — has yet to pump out the kind of lucrative technologies and start-ups envisioned in the early days.
Economic spinoffs are just beginning to show signs of life. Built from or drawn to the Danforth Center's science, homespun businesses like Divergence, a research-and-development firm focused on controlling plant parasites and pests, are slowly taking root in the region. A new research park set to rise at the Creve Coeur site has already pulled one tenant from Boston.
"In St. Louis, we've had wonderful science, but we haven't done a good job in the past of commercializing it," Danforth says. "Some of the ideas from St. Louis have gone to build companies elsewhere. I'd like to see them here.
"That's what the BioBelt does — it tries to capitalize on science."
Renegades, risk-takers and renowned scientific minds, 15 chief scientists oversee their own unique labs and research teams at the Danforth Center.
The science driven by Thomas Smith, whose studies of the structures of plant viruses are leading him to new ideas for tests and vaccine strategies for some human viruses, could soon directly affect human health. Dr. Edgar Cahoon's work on soybeans, the nation's second most widely grown crop, points to a future where plant oils may replace industrial oils.
Dr. Joe Jez, a biochemist, continues to explore ways to bioengineer plants to protect themselves from toxic metals or even to help remediate contaminated industrial sites.
These "Principal Investigators," or PIs as they're also called, hire their staffs, set the scientific direction of their teams and take on the mammoth task of raising research dollars. There's no tenure, no cushy fellowships and no load-bearing grad students. PIs prove their worth every three to five years, the typical length of their contracts with the center. They answer to one man.
One of the most decorated and influential American plant biologists of the last 25 years — and considered one of the fathers of modern plant biotechnology — Dr. Roger Beachy has served as the center's president since January 1999. In the mid-1980s Beachy helped develop the world's first genetically modified food crop — a strain of virus-resistant tomatoes — while at Washington University. In 1991 he was recruited by the prestigious Scripps Research Institute in California to head its Division of Plant Biology. Beachy's name quickly rose to the top of the Danforth Center's shortlist of presidential candidates. Danforth was equally quick to promise Beachy complete control to shape the vision and future of the center. Beachy accepted, embracing the autonomy and what he saw as community-wide commitment to a project grounded in these central questions: How can science feed the hungry, preserve the environment and contribute to the economy?
Beachy began the process of seeking out top-tier scientists interested in collaborating and conducting experiments that could spur new technologies and practical applications. His sales pitch to prospective PIs: Focus on science, forget about academic administration and take an active part in shaping the future.
"I had great confidence in the St. Louis community to do things together and to make it happen," Beachy says. "The goal was to make this one of the most efficient scientific organizations in the country. The first three or four scientists who agreed to come here put their careers on the line to go to a brand-new institution that wasn't even a hole in the ground by the time they committed. They believed in the vision and wanted to be in on the ground floor of starting something new."
Intent on immediately illustrating the new center's commitment to global crises, Beachy went straight to an old friend and collaborator,
Dr. Claude Fauquet, who had been leading the International Laboratory for Tropical Agricultural Biotechnology since he and Beachy founded it at Scripps in 1991. The lab's goal is to create technologies that can translate to developing countries. Beachy managed to lure the French virologist from the Pacific shoreline to St. Louis.
Fauquet's work to fortify cassava stands among the Danforth Center's most significant endeavors. Drought-resistant and able to perform well in poor soil, cassava remains Africa's highest annual gross production crop. However, close to half of the 90 million metric tons of cassava produced by African farmers — perhaps as much as a quarter of the world's supply — is lost to disease each year, and the cassava that is not destroyed by virus provides scant levels of protein.
Danforth Center officials expect to conduct field trials in Africa this year for a new batch of cassava plants genetically modified to resist disease — a process they've tried before, with mixed results. The results of their efforts to increase protein and vitamin production will then be submitted to peer-review journals.
Beyond recruiting Fauquet, Beachy has continued to draw attention to — and investments in — the center. Ten months after taking the Danforth job, he was named "Scientist of the Year" by Research & Development magazine. Two years later, his revolutionary work with recombinant DNA technology earned him the Wolf Prize in Agriculture, regarded as a hair's breadth beneath the Nobel Prize.
U.S. Sen. Kit Bond still remembers watching a crowd of scientists swarm the revered biologist as the pair toured a plant biotech center in India several years ago. "It was like taking Brad Pitt into a sorority gathering," says Bond, a long-time supporter of the life sciences and the Danforth Center. "He attracts scientists from all over the world."
While Beachy is pleased with the center's pace of progress, some technologies, like drought tolerance, have been slower to develop than he and his peers expected. And the center's vital cassava program hit a stumbling block in 2006, when genetically modified varieties of cassava once resistant to the mosaic virus suddenly lost their resistance.
Some critics of biotech movements in Africa pounced on the failure, claiming the entire project was engineered only to find an inexpensive source of starch — other than corn — to help produce ethanol and ease America's dependence on oil.
Center scientists attributed the loss of virus resistance to the way the plants were genetically modified. Fauquet and others soon began using a specialized type of bacteria as an insertion tool to alter the plant's genetic sequence.
"We were of course disappointed with the loss of resistance," says center spokesman Rob Rose, "but the setback didn't deter the Danforth Center from its commitment to using science to address the hunger and nutritional needs of people in developing countries." Rose says that since the 2006 discovery of the loss of resistance, Dr. Fauquet has been modifying the cassava plants using the agrobacterium method, which the center claims is more effective.
Rose also brushes aside suggestions that the center's science is fueled by an ulterior motive. "Our cassava research is designed to one day help the 250 million sub-Saharan Africans that consume cassava each day," he said. "The goal of Danforth Center scientists is to develop varieties of cassava and sweet potato for African subsistence farmers so they can produce more nutritious food to feed their families."
In light of the recent setback, it's a goal still likely over the horizon. "Getting something that is useful and, say, might lead to a new food crop that would feed Africa takes decades," Beachy says. "So then you have to be more measured in your expectations."
But the Danforth Center and its scientists continue to hold firm to the initial vision and values.
"There are some who really love and prefer discovery, the basic science," Beachy says of his team of investigators. "Others are really satisfied and rewarded when their science leads to enhancing the environment, feeding people and new enterprise. I think there's room for all of the above at the Danforth Center. Increasingly, as we have the latter, the successes will have additional visibility in the St. Louis community. In 10 years a lot more people will know a lot more about us than they do today."
Center leaders also hope that they're not still waiting for economic spin-offs to materialize by the close of decade number two.
This March, the Danforth Center broke ground on a $36 million, 118,000-square-foot wet laboratory and office building in its back yard. This will be the first of three new buildings — grouped as the Bio-Research & Development Growth (BRDG) Park — that will serve as a scientific and economic bridge for growing life-science companies, providing lab space and expertise at a reduced cost.
While success has so far been spotty in terms of commercializing technologies that originate from the Danforth Center — Beachy says translating a scientific breakthrough into a viable product can take decades and anywhere from $5 million to $10 million — officials hope the new research park will mark the turning of the entrepreneurial tide. The Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise, a science-minded business incubator on the nearby Monsanto campus, will relocate to the park, bringing with it Divergence Inc., the biotech research company that has partnered in the past with Danforth Center scientists. Center officials are in talks with the St. Louis Community College system to anchor a biotechnology training program in the research park. Metabolics, a Boston manufacturer of plant-based plastics, is also expected to have a presence in the park, as is at least one biofuels firm.
"We haven't seen a great movement of companies into St. Louis or a huge increase in the number of companies operating here," MoBot director Raven says. "One is beginning to see things happening. I couldn't characterize it as a mad rush for St. Louis to become the national center for plant and life science, but I can certainly say that we've taken a good step forward."
The venture capital climate is also greatly improving. Flat-lining investments in plant biotech endeavors in St. Louis in the late 1990s have grown to a stake in the $500 million range, Danforth says.
And private investment is on the rise. Enterprise Rent-A-Car founder Jack Taylor and his family, which had donated $10 million to the center in 2005, donated another $25 million earlier this year to establish the Institute for Renewable Fuels. The gift, matched by Dr. Danforth, will fund a research team focused on plant-based biofuels.
If there's been a failing in the Danforth Center's first decade, it's been in public education, says COO Fiorello. Early literature and awareness campaigns tilted too much toward the technical, he admits, serving mostly to confuse average St. Louisans instead of inspiring them.
In more recent years, the center trimmed its mission statement and educational materials to stress its underlying goal — helping people via basic science.
"That was a missed opportunity," Fiorello says of the center's early communication efforts. "You have to give people the 'so what.' It's about improving the human condition eventually."
It's also about bolstering the St. Louis economy — and providing a return on taxpayer investment. Millions of federal research dollars and state tax credits have funneled into the Danforth Center during its existence.
Danforth, Bond and other initial backers remain confident that the center will become a signature economic producer as their BioBelt vision comes closer to fruition.
"Ideas without action mean nothing. But we have the possibility of bringing those companies that do the actual development and production of biotech plants into Missouri," Bond says. "We have all the elements that are needed."
Scientific landmarks develop over decades. Beachy is quick to point out that notable biomedical hotbeds in San Diego, Boston and North Carolina's Research Triangle each took 15 to 20 years to mature. The St. Louis region's ability to specialize in plant science may spur a more rapid rise, but with speed and specialization come tempered expectations.
"After 10 years, are we on track to become one of the best areas in the life sciences? I think the answer is yes," Beachy says. "But it's unlikely that we will be the star in all parts of life sciences."
That isn't to say he expects the Danforth Center to lurk in the scientific shadows. Beachy sees a near future in which Third World farmers harvest enriched cassava and scatter rice and peanut seeds modified to withstand disease and drought. He sees new pathways for physicians to attack and treat human viruses. He sees plant oils and enzymes replacing costly, nonrenewable industrial materials that degrade the environment. He sees payoff beyond all the promise.
The coming years will determine whether Beachy and his team have been overly optimistic about these promises and whether those global populations the center wants to reach will in fact be reached. Time will also tell whether public concern with genetic modification will rise or fall. While an April New York Times article suggested that rising food prices and global grain shortages have meant increased acceptance (if reluctant) to GM crops, an 8,000-word investigation in the May Vanity Fair argues that Monsanto — a significant Danforth Center partner — should receive greater scrutiny about its worldwide modification efforts and tactics regarding how its seeds are utilized.
For scientists like Thomas Smith, work at the Danforth Center has proved thoroughly rewarding, offering daily opportunities to probe the big questions by focusing on the basics. A decade later, the former Purdue professor still relishes diving in headfirst.
"We all live for that 'Eureka!' moment," Smith says. "We have a lot of low moments where our ideas aren't working and the experiment didn't work or we didn't get a grant. But we all live for that day we walk in the lab and see something no one saw before."
The Evolution of a Science Center
- 1995: Drs. William Danforth, Peter Raven and Virginia Weldon discuss idea of a plant science institute for St. Louis
- July 31, 1998: Former President Jimmy Carter travels to St. Louis to announce the creation of the $146 million Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
- July 31, 1998: Dr. Roger Beachy named president of the center
- August 2, 1999: Groundbreaking for the center's $75 million facility
- September 2000: BioBelt branding campaign launched
- November 2, 2001: Danforth Center officially opens its doors
- August 28, 2007: Groundbreaking for a new $5.25 million, 15,300-square-foot greenhouse
- March 4, 2008: Groundbreaking for the first of three buildings that will make up the Bio-Research & Development Growth (BRDG) Park, which will support the needs of start-up life-science companies
- Spring 2009: Expected opening date of the first BRDG facility
