By Emily Hamann – Staff Writer, Sacramento Business Journal
Being designated an essential industry hasn’t kept the founders of Pheronym from encountering work-stopping disruptions.
“We were allowed to keep working, but the people we work with aren’t,” said co-founder Karl Cameron Schiller.
Pheronym is a Davis-based agricultural technology startup working to develop pest-control products based around its research on pheromones that control tiny worms in the soil called nematodes.
Company founders CEO Fatma Kaplan and Schiller were preparing to bring their products to market next year.
Sustainable pest control using nematode pheromones for crop protection in the running for $100,000 prize.
DAVIS, CA, May 8, 2020 – Pheronym is pleased to announce that it has been recognized as a finalist in the Ray of Hope Prize®, a $100,000 prize competition presented by the Biomimicry Institute. Pheronym uses a new kind of pheromone for eco-friendly, agricultural pest control, increasing crop yield and food production. Pheronym’s first product, Nemastim, makes beneficial nematodes more effective for insect pest control in the soil.
Nemastim makes beneficial nematodes (Steinernema feltiae and Steinernema carpocapsae) better biocontrol agents and expands their effective temperature range down to 15℃, making them an even more effective solution today and in the future. The beneficial nematodes move faster, go deeper in the soil, and infect in 3X greater numbers. The benefits of this approach, including enhanced efficacy, reduced costs, and increased sustainability, are exactly the things that our agricultural customers are asking for and consumers of produce are demanding.
“As the world searches for more environmentally friendly crop protection solutions, Pheronym presents an elegant solution,” said Jared Yarnall-Schane, Entrepreneurship Director, Biomimicry Institute. “By emulating nematodes’ natural communication methods, pheromones, they increase efficiency and efficacy. This makes an organic form of pest control cost-competitive with synthetic alternatives.”
Pheronym is one of the nine companies, out of 190 applications spanning 42 countries, in the running for the $100,000 prize, which will help the winning company accelerate their path to commercial success. The Biomimicry Institute’s expert selection committee will decide which nature-inspired startup will take home the prize in the fall of 2020.
Pheronym’s founding team offers complimentary skill sets: Mr. Karl Schiller, COO, is an economist and Dr. Fatma Kaplan, CEO is a scientist, giving them the necessary breadth of knowledge to bring a novel biological technology like Nemastim to market. Mr. Schiller’s business expertise helps the team rapidly organize and achieve legal and regulatory milestones while Dr. Kaplan focuses on executing her vision to achieve technical milestones and raise funds.
Dr. Kaplan has a Ph.D. in Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology and postdoctoral training in Natural Product Chemistry with a focus on isolating biologically active compounds. She discovered the first sex pheromone of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which was published in Nature in 2008. Then she discovered that pheromones regulate other behaviors in both plant parasitic and beneficial nematodes. Dr. Kaplan and Mr. Schiller conducted the first agricultural biocontrol experiment in Space at the International Space Station in 2020. Together they co-founded Pheronym to bring nematode pheromone technology to the market and believe that this technology will provide effective, pollinator/bee-friendly, non-toxic pest control for farmers and gardeners. Studies on nematode pheromones’ efficacy, infectivity and temperature range can be found here.
“The Ray of Hope prize committee’s recognition of our bio-inspired technology validates our belief that nature holds the keys to future agricultural innovations,” said Mr. Schiller founder of Pheronym.
To learn more about Pheronym, visit pheronym.com. For more information about the Biomimicry Institute and Ray of Hope Prize, visit biomimicry.org.
####
ABOUT PHERONYM
Award-winning Pheronym is an ag-biotech pest management company that enables sustainable farming through its novel platform of nematode pheromones. Based in Merritt Island, Florida and Davis, California, the company uses a new pheromone to control plant-parasitic nematodes (microscopic roundworms) in an eco-friendly way and enhances beneficial nematodes’ efficacy to eliminate pest insects.
ABOUT THE BIOMIMICRY INSTITUTE
The Biomimicry Institute is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 that empowers people to seek nature-inspired solutions for a healthy planet. To advance the solution process, the Institute offers AskNature.org, a free online tool that contains strategies found in nature and examples of ways they are used in design. It also hosts a Biomimicry Global Design Challenge and Youth Design Challenge to support project-based education; a Biomimicry Launchpad program and Ray of Hope Prize® for entrepreneurship to bring designs to market; and connects innovators through the Global Biomimicry Network.
Media Contact:
Name: Karl C. Schiller Email; schiller@pheronym.com Phone: 352-283-6967
Q:What are some of the challenges you have faced as a female leader in agriculture and how have you overcome these challenges?
A: “I have been in agriculture all of my life. I work hard because agriculture requires hard work in every aspect. One thing I did see, when you’re a woman, people don’t see your accomplishments. When you’re a man, they immediately recognize them. But when women do the same accomplishment or more, most of the time it goes unnoticed. Even though we don’t do things for recognition, it is nice to be recognized from time to time that we know our efforts are appreciated.
“The way I overcame many challenges is I surrounded myself with very positive and supportive people. Keep reading.
The COVID-19 pandemic is unlike any disaster we have seen in our lives. Our first coping strategy was to understand the disaster as much as we can. The consequences of COVID-19 multiply the disaster’s effects. Unfortunately, our governments were not prepared for this pandemic. Our hospitals do not have enough beds or equipment to take care of the sick. We do not know when we get sick whether we will be taken care of or triaged to die alone or with family. We are very thankful for all the healthcare professionals who are working tirelessly to find a cure, develop diagnostic tests, create a vaccine, take care of the sick, and provide us with guidance on how to protect ourselves and others (CDC).
Due to COVID-19, all of the institutions that we rely on to function in our daily lives are gone overnight. For example, schools closed unexpectedly and everyone was told to work from home. We are all expected to have rooms ready for distance learning for our kids and home offices so we could work from home. Nevermind that in dual profession families, our partners are also expected to work at the same time from home. What about the daycare closures? Families with young children are miraculously expected to work from home while taking care of the kids at the same time. Closures of many businesses like restaurants and bakeries, bars, and the hospitality industry have left people without jobs and without health insurance at a time when health insurance is a necessity. Even simple things like buying toilet paper, paper towels, baking soda or flour at the grocery store became a major issue due to shortages. These are all that we count on and take for granted, and now they are gone.
Tomatoes in a field waiting.
Are these really important? Yes. Those things that make us productive so we can take care of responsibilities such as pay our rent, bills, or care for ourselves and our families. Even when we are told to self-quarantine at home, our responsibilities have not gone away. Because we are still expected to work and be as productive as before the pandemic. Plenty of people are sharing pictures of their Zoom meetings, going about business as usual and pretending that self-quarantine has not slowed them down. It is time to realize that the COVID-19 disaster disrupted our lives, our governments, and the entire world. We are not alone. This change is very different from everything we have experienced or could imagine. That is stressful by itself.
You may be wondering “What does this have to do with Pheronym’s work?” It has everything to do with developing a coping strategy to function. The disruption to our daily lives directly affects our founders’ and employees’ effectiveness. It creates additional stress that was not there before. This is not ordinary stress. It is a global crisis that is felt by everyone worldwide. Our first focus is how can we reduce the stress to a manageable level because the stress is not going to go away anytime soon. Every day there is more grim news; a rising death toll globally, more new cases every day, and we know it is just going to get worse. We are working very hard to keep the morale up by being supportive and positive and sharing whatever good news we have. There is still hope. Keep reading
Being a preseed/seed biotech startup in Agriculture is a challenge all by itself. The COVID-19 pandemic makes it even harder. Four weeks ago we were informed that the COVID-19 pandemic had arrived in the US and we needed to self-quarantine and start social distancing. This was an incomparable challenge to our resilience.
Pheronym’s founders (Dr. Fatma Kaplan and Mr. Karl Schiller) lived many years in Florida and were accustomed to dealing with natural disasters (hurricanes). We learned to continue to work without any disruption, take care of ourselves and families. The State of Florida had disaster plans and shelters already in place. We knew when the hurricanes were coming, what degree of damage to expect, how long we would stay at home (distance work), and whether we needed to go to a shelter/stop the work temporarily. All of this information helped us to plan and how to utilize our time efficiently during the many potential disruptions. If we needed to stop work for a period of time, we knew what to do.
I (Fatma) worked for the USDA-ARS. Many of my colleagues went through government shutdowns/furloughs where they were not allowed to work. During my time at the USDA, the government almost shutdown, so everyone got training for how to run a biotechnology research program during a government shutdown, where we would not be allowed to go to work and conduct experiments. I never thought this training would be useful, but here we are.
The first confirmed incidence of community spread COVID-19 in the US occurred in Solano County, California, not far from Davis where Pheronym operates R&D. I set up a temporary shutdown of laboratory work while maintaining the essential culture that would be ready to go when things come back to normal. My co-founder and I knew how to deal with unavoidable work disruptions, so we went about our usual disaster preparations. All disasters are bad, but nothing is like COVID-19.
I don’t think anyone was prepared for the kind of disruption caused by the COVID-19 disaster. The disruption was not just to Pheronym or businesses in our state, it was in all 50 states altogether. It was disrupting the entire world. It was like an alien invasion of our planet, disrupting our lives globally.
COVID-19 is worse than the deadliest hurricane in the US, Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, this time we are not trying to clean up some fallen trees or fix property damage caused by the winds and rain. This time we are worrying that our friends, family, and colleagues are getting sick and dying. Our hospitals do not have enough beds or equipment to take care of the sick.
In addition, all of the institutions that we rely on to function in our daily life are gone overnight. For example, the schools are closed, daycares are closed, eating out is no longer a possibility, getting together more than a group of two is not OK. We can’t find a simple toilet paper or flour at the grocery stores.
These are all things we have taken for granted, and they are gone. It is like living in a science fiction story where our planet is invaded and we lost everything except for our virtual world. We now realize that the virtual world is not enough. Now we have to figure out how to survive and thrive when everything is taken from us. We, humans, are very resilient, I believe we can do it together.
Third Peer-Reviewed Study Shows Company’s Patented Bio-remediation Technology Works in Cooler Weather, Expanding the Range for Deploying Nematode-based biological control
DAVIS, CA, UNITED STATES, March 31, 2020 — Pheronym, an ag-biotech pest control company, announced today the results of their third peer-reviewed study demonstrating the efficacy of their patented Nematism ™ pheromone extract for bio-remediation of agricultural pests. In a study to be published in Scientific Reports by Springer Nature, Dr. David Shapiro-Ilan with the USDA-ARS, Dr. Ed Lewis, with the University of Idaho, and Dr. Fatma Kaplan, with Pheronym reported that nematodes treated with Pheronym’s pheromones still aggressively dispersed in temperatures as low as 15 degrees Celsius, which was superior to untreated nematodes. Most entomopathogenic (insect-killing) nematode species require 20 degrees or above for optimum activity.
The research, led by Dr. Kaplan with Pheronym, Inc., studied pheromones’ role in the stimulation of dispersal at temperatures from 15 to 30 degrees Celsius and how this is affected by nematodes’ foraging strategy.
“Nematodes typically reduce their dispersal or remain motionless in cooler temperatures. Expanding the temperature range downward for deploying beneficial nematodes means farmers can enhance the use of environmentally-friendly pest management solutions and thereby reduce harmful chemical inputs,” said Dr. Fatma Kaplan, CEO of Pheronym. “In essence, Pheronym’s Nemastim takes the Nematodes from chill, to kill.”
“Expanding the temperature range for deployment of beneficial nematodes is a huge win for sustainable agriculture,” said Dr. David Shapiro, USDA-ARS. “It’s just one more reason for more aggressive commercial deployment of effective solutions like nematode pheromones.”
Despite difficult times we are all experiencing, there is still hope for exciting news. Pheronym is honored to be among the 9 finalists for the Ray of Hope Prize awarded by the Biomimicry Institute.
These finalists were selected from 190 applications which were from 42 countries. Most exciting of all, 7 of the 9 finalists are women-led companies.
Dr. Kaplan at Pheronym is honored to be invited to talk about how utilizing the ISS has been instrumental to Pheronym’s mission in contributing towards agriculture on earth and feeding the world.
AstroNematode returned to earth on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2020.
This week, SpaceX's Dragon resupply returned to earth with research from station. NASA's Christina Koch continues to add days to her new record of longest single spaceflight by a female astronaut. #SpaceToGroundpic.twitter.com/HYzOE8ipoC
The capsule, which launched from Florida’s Space Coast, will splash down next week in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Long Beach, California.
Pheronym uses pheromones to control microscopic roundworms for agricultural purposes. What do you think about the research happening on the International Space Station? Keep reading
Dr. Kaplan has a Ph.D. in Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology and postdoctoral training in Natural Product Chemistry with a focus on isolating biologically active compounds. She discovered the first sex pheromone of the nematode 
“The Ray of Hope prize committee’s recognition of our bio-inspired technology validates our belief that nature holds the keys to future agricultural innovations,” said Mr. Schiller founder of Pheronym. 
