Pheronym

Pheronym is a biotechnology company located Davis, California founded by Dr. Fatma Kaplan and Karl Cameron Schillermaking. Pheronym makes pheromone-like molecules for pest control that produce economically advantageous behaviour in parasitic nematodes; driving them away from plants, and towards insects. The company claims their pheromone technology — when applied to nematodes — results in an 5X increase in targeted insect kill rates compared to untreated nematodes; while non-target insects remain safe, and no harmful residues are left in the environment.

Nemastim is a pheromone product that used to treat commercial nematodes used for pest control and can be sprayed using regular pesticide/herbicide spraying equipment. When commercial nematodes are treated with Nemastim, they are stimulated to search for and kill insect pests. The application of Nemastim is broad spectrum, meaning it stimulates nematodes to attack 28 known insect pest. Nemastim makes nematodes target and kill insect pests for the following crop varieties: almonds, apricots, cherries, cucumbers, oranges, peaches. pecans, tomatoes, and many more.

CEO and founder of Pheronym Dr. Fatma Kaplan, along with a team of scientists from the University of Florida, won the 2018: Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services: Specialty Crop Block Grant Award for their research proposal titled "Nematode-resistant pepper varieties for Florida".

On October 18, 2017 Pheronym was awarded a $100,000 USDA-SBIR Phase I grant to support further research into the development and application of Pheronym's pheromone technology.

In March 30, 2017 Pheronym was accepted into IndieBio's 4.5 month long accelerator program receiving $250,000 in funding from IndieBio and SOSV.

On February 20, 2019 Pheronym announced they received a grant worth $100,000 from the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory. After receiving this grant, Pheronym became the first company in the world to have a contract for an agricultural bio-control experiment that will take place in space. The project director and CEO of Pheronym, Dr. Fatma Kaplan, made the following public state after the companies grant announcement:

We are looking to duplicate in space the success of our earth-bound commercialization trials of our nematode focused bio-remediation. Our only regret is we can’t join our nematodes for their trip to the Space Station.