Vestaron enlisted to fight malaria bearing mosquito

Approximately one million children die each year of malaria. For the first time in decades, a public health insecticide is being developed to fight the mosquitoes that cause the disease and Kalamazoo’s Vestaron has been asked to help.

The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health has awarded Vestaron a $1.4 million grant to develop insecticides over three years to control the spread of malaria by mosquitoes.  

Vestaron's scientists are working to find out how spiders kill insects and apply that to a new generation of insecticides. They expect these insecticides would be powerful but would not harm farm animals, wildlife or farm workers. The company's research is focused on the peptides produced by spiders and the company currently has three spider peptides under development. Vestaron has an exclusive patent on this technology.

Vestaron is one of four research groups to receive grants to do the research through the Global Challenge Health Initiative, a major research effort intended to achieve scientific breakthroughs against diseases that kill millions of people each year in the world's poorest countries.

The goal of the initiative is to create tools that are effective, inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute, and simple to use in developing countries. The initiative launched in 2003 with a $200 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.

The grant award is the second coup announced this month for the agricultural biotechnology company located in the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center, Earlier, the company was named one of five Scale Up Michigan winners, which comes with an award of technical and lab assistance worth up to $25,000 from the Michigan State University Bioeconomy Institute.

"We are grateful to have this opportunity to apply our technology to this important global health need,” says Robert Kennedy, Ph.D., Vestaron vice president of research.

Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave
Source: Nancy Newman, Vestaron