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Bed bugs have been a serious problem for the past fifteen years or so and are getting worse
every year. So our group here is doing a number of different projects on bed bugs. Most importantly
how the bed bugs find us. How the bed bugs find the host from which they need to take
a blood meal. One of the critical issues with bed bugs is that the current pest control
approaches that we have are either in effective in a case of many of the insecticides that
we have, or extremely expensive in a case of for example heat treatments. So, we see
the future as developing what we call liquid bait for bed bugs. A liquid bait would have
four different components. The first component is to get the bed bug from wherever it is
to the bait. The second component is once the bed bug gets there we need to entice the
bed bug to feed or to engorge on the bait as if it were a human. The third component
then of this liquid bait formulation would be the insecticide. Doesn’t necessarily
need to be a synthetic insecticide. It can be a biological control agent for example.
It could be a virus or a fungus or a bacteria that kills the bed bug. And of course the
fourth component of this bait would be to try to use an insecticide or a biological
control agent that after the bed bug feeds it can defecate in its aggregation and therefore
expose its family to either the biological control agent or the insecticide. And so you
can have sort of a domino effect or an amplification effect. And so these are the four important
components of the liquid bait. We think that this chancellor’s innovation grant will
really speed up and move us faster towards developing this liquid bait concept. If we
look at the bites that bed bugs cause, we look at the allergies that they cause, we
look at the secondary infections that people get from scratching at these bites. We look
at the psychological issues that are involved, the anxiety of having bed bugs, the isolation
from society that many people experience because they don’t want anyone else to know. They
don’t want their friends, they stop inviting their friends to their home because they have
bed bugs. When we look at sleeplessness especially amongst the elderly it can cause tremendous
anxiety and sleeplessness. Bed bugs are actually a very important health concern. And so I
think it’s important to convince both the public and federal agencies that bed bugs
indeed are a very important medical concern.