ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605280004
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
They creep and crawl noiselessly behind your refrigerator, in the water pipes and next to the garbage can with their tiny spindly legs and seemingly invincible little bodies.
Cockroaches long have been the scourge of civilized society, which explains why we spend millions of dollars every year to get rid of them. Dominion Biosciences, a start-up Blacksburg company in Virginia Tech's Corporate Research Center, hopes to capitalize on this market with a new bait - essentially a birth control pill for cockroaches.
A patent was issued earlier this month for Ecologix, a compound developed at Virginia Tech that interrupts the roaches' metabolisms and reproductive cycles. Dominion Biosciences, which plans to market Ecologix as a bait, has licensed the research from Virginia Tech.
Although the bait is not yet on the market, Dominion Biosciences is on the verge of a deal with an international agrichemical company, said Steve Banegas, chief executive officer and president of Dominion Biosciences. The deal would will help fund development of the product and eventually market it to pest control professionals.
Banegas still is negotiating with over-the-counter manufacturers to sell the bait in the retail stores. He is expecting approval of the bait from the Environmental Protection Agency in 1997.
Field tests of the bait now are under way in several Southern cities, Banegas said, in insect-ridden areas.
"You go to the worst places where there's going to be thousands and thousands of roaches," he said.
The bait is a brown, fudge-like substance that is 98 percent food and two percent Ecologix. While other extermination products literally poison the roaches, this bait contains a chemical that prevents the formation of an acid they need to reproduce and develop.
That chemical, oxypurinol, is used to treat gout - a recurrent disease characterized by inflamed joints - in humans. The chemical prevents the formation of uric acid, which humans do not need, according to Heather Wren, a former research scientist at Tech's entomology department who helped develop Ecologix.
The roaches are attracted to the bait, which is in a small roach motel-like container, because it looks like an appealing snack, just as french fries would tempt humans, Banegas said.
Roaches die within three days of feasting on the bait, though tests have found the males go first because they are the most active in the reproduction arena. Females and nymphs, or baby roaches, soon follow.
"What we've found is compared to conventional pesticides, they're naturally attracted to the material," Banegas said.
Dominion Biosciences, which was founded in 1993, operates from a small one-room office in the Corporate Research Center and has only one employee besides Banegas. The company does maintain a network of about 30 consultants, including Wren.
The company hopes to cash in on a share of what is estimated at a $30 billion worldwide market for environmentally safe pesticides. The market just for cockroach bait is estimated at $700 million annually.
Banegas is a former senior manager at Ciba-Geigy Corp. After leaving the pharmaceutical company, he started another biotech business in 1985 that developed tests to detect agricultural and environmental contaminants.
But Banegas, who commutes to Blacksburg from Greensboro, N.C., four days a week, was more interested in the therapeutic side of business and "literally started walking the halls" in search of research that could be turned into a successful venture. He found Wren's research at Virginia Tech and another project at Penn State, where a professor has isolated a bacteria strain that kills fungicides.
Dominion Biosciences began with eight private investors, including several local business people, who each contributed $50,000. Recently, the company gained another $1 million in venture capital.
For now, much of the company's focus is on the cockroach bait now that the patent has been issued and a deal with a commercial company is on the horizon. The invention already has garnered media attention from publications such as The Washington Post and Business Week magazine.
Touting a product he calls a birth control pill for cockroaches could hardly go unnoticed, Banegas admits. The most frequent question asked, added, is "How do you get them to take the pill everyday?"
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM STAFF Although the roach bait is not yet onby CNBthe market, Dominion Biosciences is on the verge of a marketing
deal, says Steve Banegas, chief executive officer and president of
the company. color