LSU professors get $550K to make cheap, effective bug spray for mosquitoes and ticks

Tyler Eschette
·3 min read

BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Could a compound found in a common fruit be the key to decreasing Lyme disease, malaria and West Nile virus cases? Three professors at Louisiana State University will be working together to make an affordable way to prevent mosquito and tick bites using a chemical found in grapefruit skin.

According to a news release from LSU, chemical engineering professor Kerry Dooley, chemical engineering department chair Mike Benton and Department of Biological Science professor Roger Laine were given a $550,000 grant to continue working on the project. The award was made through the National Science Foundation Partnership for Innovation.

A CDC report in 2024 revealed that there were 62,251 Lyme disease cases in 2022. Recent estimates showed that around 476,000 people may be diagnosed with Lyme disease every year in the United States, but only a fraction of the cases are reported.

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The project will refine the creation of nootkatone, which is “an FDA-approved organic compound found in grapefruit skin and Alaska yellow cedar trees that is a natural deterrent for many insects, including the deer tick responsible for Lyme disease,” according to the release.

“The family of compounds that make up nootkatone is already proven to be both safer and more effective than existing commercial repellents,” said Dooley. “However, it’s now too expensive for consumer insect repellents. We plan to greatly streamline, optimize and reduce the costs associated with the synthesis.”

Several years ago, Laine discovered the effectiveness of nootkatone as an insect repellent. He and retired LSU AgCenter entomologist Gregg Henderson determined that “nootkatone repelled insects like mosquitos, gnats, wood ticks, fleas, lice and fire ants,” according to the release.

Through their research, they discovered that nootkatone was the best repellent, but the cost was too steep to make using it affordable in consumer products.

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“Nootkatone costs $2,500/kg, which is too costly for insect repellent,” said Laine. “It should be $200-$300/kg, then you can add it to lotions and sunscreens.”

Dooley found one way to cut costs is to change part of the eight-step synthesis of nootkatone. He researched how the fourth step used “potassium hydride and 18-Crown-6 ether, along with tetrahydrofuran, as a solvent.”

Dooley and Benton came up with a catalyst and solvent that would be able to lower the cost of this fourth step, according to the LSU release.

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“It’s incredibly complicated and it takes a long, sustained effort to go from making a few grams of something to making kilograms or kilotons,” said Dooley. “There’s a lot of work from optimizing separations, minimizing the solvent use, getting certain impurities down, and getting yields slightly up. These things take a lot of time and effort.”

According to the release, the LSU research team hopes to produce affordable nootkatone products that can save people’s lives by reducing bug-born illnesses like Lyme, encephalitis and malaria.

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