Vestaron Corp. and MI-SBTDC Collarborating to Bring Venom Product to Market

June 2011

Source: Great Lakes Innovation and Technology Report (GLITR)

Vestaron Corp. is doing final field trials of its spider-derived insecticide.

The unique thing about the product? It's deadly to insects, but isn't toxic to mammals at all.

"It is a next generation insecticide for the cleantech 21st Century," said Bob Kennedy, Vestaron's vice president of research.

The chemicals involved, peptide components of spider venom, were originally researched by University of Connecticut professor Glenn King. The company was started in 2005 in Connecticut and moved to the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center in Kalamazoo in 2007 under original CEO John McIntyre, a veteran of the agricultural biotechnology business. Vestaron is now recruiting a new CEO.

"We had a terrific launch phase, and we are now recruiting leadership for the expected commercialization phase of the company," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said that after final field trials, the company will initiate testing and registration of the product with the United States Environmental Protection Agency. He said the company expects to start commercial sales in late 2013 or early 2014.

The initial target markets, Kennedy said, will be "the high value vegetable, tree, fruit, nut and vine markets." Manufacturing of the cleantech product at commercial scale will be contracted out, Kennedy said.

Kennedy said Vestaron has been working informally with the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development Centers for several years, "but recently we've been more tightly engaged with them, and in the past year we've been involved in their technology roadmapping, and it's been really helpful."

Kennedy said SBTDC "offers a workshop that helps you develop your pipeline from product to market, and that kind of strategy planning is really helpful in creating clarity both for the company, and in some ways more importantly, for investors. That's really important. At a small company you can intuit how all the pieces fit together, but letting investors know how everything fits together and help them understand the opportunity, that's incredibly important."

Vestaron currently has nine employees and is still based at the SMIC, though Kennedy said it eventually plans on "graduating" to its own headquarters once production starts.

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