Designing our project required to have a holistic approach. We had to considered not only the efficacy, the safety and the security of our concept but also its societal impact. Thus, human practices have been the heart and the conductor. In only eight months of work, we have built a concrete idea of trap to get rid of these worldwide vermin, bed bugs, that complies with societal desires and needs. However, we are still at a prototype stage that requires to be optimized.

To this end, we have already begun to carry out tests thanks to one of our collaborators, Crous Aix Marseille Avignon. They have few apartments that are infested with bed bugs and that has not been treated yet. For the moment, we only have tested our trap for a week. It is not optimal in terms of reproducibility but also because the fungus that we use, Beauveria bassiana, requires a minimum of ten days to be fully effective. In a very short-term, we must go on with these experiments.

Moreover, we chose to use a biological synthesis pathway to produce pheromones rather than a chemical one for a question of profitability. Living organisms represent a real potential and allow to produce a pheromone cocktail in one shift. But for now, we had produced each feedstock in different bacteria to test their activity. In a medium-term perspective, we have to optimize the pheromone production by combining all synthesis pathway (in operon) of all pheromone in one single bacteria.

Once these improvements completed, the culmination of the project will be to commercialize our trap. In order to ensure this, we currently have a partnership with a specialist of extermination of “pests”, Rentokil. They are already working on bed bugs and they contacted us after seeing one of our press article to collaborate on our mutual acquaintance. Such collaboration will be crucial for a student team like us to bring our idea to market in the longer term.