ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270142
SECTION: WELCOME STUDENTS PAGE: 28 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
IT'S BIRTH CONTROL time for the creepy-crawlies. The only problem is, how do you get them to take the little pill every day?
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 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 poison the roaches, this bait contains a chemical that prevents the formation of an acid they need to reproduce and develop.
That chemical, oxypurinol, also is used to treat gout 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.
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.
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 maintains a network of about 30 consultants, including Wren.
The company hopes for a share of what is estimated to be a $30 billion worldwide market for environmentally safe pesticides. The market for cockroach bait alone 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, each of whom contributed $50,000.
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, he added,
is "How do you get them to take the pill every day?"
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON Staff. Dr. Donald Mullins, professor ofby CNBentomology at Tech, and Steve Benegas of Dominion Biosciences take a
close look at some of their targets.