The designing our project required a holistic approach. We had to consider not only the efficiency, the biosafety and security of our plan, but its societal impact as well. Thus, human practices was at the heart of our project. In only eight months of work, we have built a concrete idea of trap to get rid of these worldwide vermin, bed bugs, that meets with public desires and needs. However, we are still at the prototype stage and the design 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 several apartments that are infested with bed bugs and that have not been treated yet. For the moment, we only have tested the first version of our trap for a week. It is bit too short term for reliable results especially because the fungus, Beauveria bassiana, requires about ten days to be fully effective. In the immediate, 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 and enzyme mix in one go. But for now, we have produced each component in different bacteria to test their activity. In a more medium-term perspective, we should optimize the pheromone production by combining all synthesis pathways of all the pheromones in one single bacteria.

Once these improvements completed, the culmination of the project will be to commercialize our trap in the longer term. In order to ensure this, we have partnered with two companies specialized in vermin treatment which are :

1. 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 enemy.
2. CSTB (technical building science center) that we met on the Social Housing Union Convention. They are creating a detection technique aimed at bed bugs. Their technique would potentially have a 100 percent efficacy. Our project has drawn their attention because it only focuses on the next step bed bug elimination. Our trap is complementary to their work that is why they have offered us a collaboration. Thus we will have the opportunity to develop and upgrade our trap with the CSBT.

Such collaborations will be crucial for a student team like us to bring our idea to market.