The Power of Peptides - Part Two

The Power of Peptides - Part Two

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for your Farm of the Future report. I’m Tim Hammerich.

Peptides have really caught on in human medicine, and they may have similar potential to displace chemical pesticides. But if that’s true, why haven’t they caught on before?

Rath… “You have to be able to manufacture them at agricultural costs of goods, right. Which are very different from pharma where whatever your cost is, you can get it reimbursed.”

That’s Anna Rath, CEO of Vestaron which makes peptide-based pesticides. She says the other big challenge is in getting to peptides to the same receptors that the chemicals use.

Rath… “These are bigger molecules. And so in pharma, when you're dealing with a big molecule, you can get it into the bloodstream by giving somebody a shot, right. Can't do that so much of the insects in the field. And so we needed to figure out how we were going to get back big molecule from the mouth of the insect, right? When it eats the leaf and picks up the pesticide into the effectively bloodstream - the hemolymph of the insect where the target receptor resides. And so what we have figured out to do is to pair our peptide with a very small sub lethal dose of a gut disruptor or something that would poke holes in the gut of the insect and therefore create the path that our peptides can use to get from the mouth of the insect into the bloodstream and thereby the target receptor.”

Learn more about peptides at Vestaron.com.

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