Don't let the bedbugs bite

TyraTech, a four-year old company in Melbourne, Fla., is working on a method to clean up the need for pesticides, and bring Mother Nature into the bug killing industry.

The company's products, with the first due to hit the market later this year, are a mix of natural oils that target sensitive receptors found on invertebrates.

"Instead of using the standard poisons that have been, and are still being used, we have something that selectively is toxic to the insect, that is not toxic to the environment or people or animals," Douglas Armstrong, CEO of TyraTech, told Cleantech Group.

The control of insects and parasites is a $30 billion plus industry, and Armstrong said the industry is interested in going clean.

"We have over 24 products now in development, either ourselves or with our partners," he said.

Originally backed with funds from XL TechGroup, the company already has deals for licensing or supply with Japan's Arysta LifeScience, Switzerland's Syngenta and Illinois' Kraft Foods, and an option agreement with Ohio's Scotts Miracle-Gro.

Florida's XL TechGroup also owns stakes in AgCert International, which produces and sells Certified Emissions Reductions, and PetroAlgae, which is developing oil from algae technology.

XL TechGroup still holds a 47.9 percent stake in TyraTech, which it floated on London's Alternative Investment Market in May.

But TyraTech got its start in a power outage.

Essam Enan, TyraTech's chief scientific officer, was working at a cancer research lab at the University of California, Davis, when a blackout led to bug infestations in the surrounding labs.

Enan's lab was bug-free.

"Essam had been very active in research on G-coupled proteins. In particular how they can affect the viability of cells," said Armstrong.

G-coupled proteins, which are often targets for pharmaceutical developments, pick up chemical signals from outside a cell and relay them to the inside. The disruption of receptors can repel or kill insects.

Enan had also been very interested in plant essential oils and began to evaluate them together with G-coupled proteins.

"When he moved to Vanderbilt he began to really focus on the chemoreceptors that are found on insects and other invertebrates and the ones that were G-coupled protein types of receptors," said Armstrong.

Nashville's Vanderbilt University holds a 23.1 percent stake in TyraTech.

The company's first product, TyraTech All Natural Crawling Insect Killer, will be made with active ingredients on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's exempt list.

That means the ingredients don't require registration with the government agency because they are already considered safe.

TyraTech, which uses sub-contractors for the component products and manufacturing, plans a pilot market in the U.S. for the All Natural Crawling Insect Killer, with an expansion set for next year.

The insect killer will be sold to businesses, at competitive prices compared with current pesticides, said Armstrong, with future products targeting agriculture, gardening and even food.

Because the ingredients are natural oils, that means the products are safe to drink.

"It's opened up a whole new field of applications for it, which is to use TyraTech Naturals to control intestinal parasites as an alternative to either toxic pharmaceuticals, which have their own limitations, but more importantly as a way to prevent parasites in what's become an enormous economic and health system problem in many parts of the world," said Armstrong.

That's the basis of TyraTech's partnership with Kraft Foods.

"They're going to develop a line of food products that can be eaten on a daily basis, that will all incorporate TyraTech Naturals, and that will be sold in parts of the world where intestinal parasites are endemic."

TyraTech's products currently target insects and nematodes, like snails, snugs, worms and parasites, but it's planning work on fungicides and on making its current products more specialized.

"If you're going to spray a field, could you, for example, kill the bugs you want and spare the honeybee, or spare the ladybug?" asked Armstrong. "With our receptor targeted technology, we actually have the ability to begin to develop those types of products."

Cleantech developments making news in the past 24 hours

• AES raises $1.58B with China Investment

View the last week of cleantech developments here | Subscribe to full feed