Mosquitoes are the leading vectors of diseases that kill millions of people every year—over 2.5 million because of malaria alone. Add in dengue fever, West Nile virus and others, and mosquito control in both urban and agricultural environments is clearly a worldwide priority.
ISCA Technologies has succeeded in developing the Zumba™ Mosquito Trap and biological lure that accurately mimics the odor of human skin. This lure, called SkinLure™, is emitted from a specially designed trap that attracts mosquitoes and sucks them into a capture net. In competitive mosquito trap tests, all 100 mosquitoes released into a room were trapped in less than eight minutes. Many other field tests have been performed by independent entomologists that have demonstrated that the Zumba™ trap outperforms other leading mosquito traps. The Zumba™ trap has been optimized to mimic human physical characteristics that are attractive to mosquitoes, such as profile, height, color, and human breathing. The trap has been designed to U.S. Army specifications to be portable, collapsible, and able to be deployed in the field without the need for an electrical power outlet or pressurized gas.
Because of the nature of the lure, the trap may well have applications for any other disease-carrying insects that are attracted to the odor of human skin. The company successfully concluded an $850,000 contract with the U.S. Army to develop a mosquito trap for military use. OTTC/CCAT San Bernardino helped the firm with an initial development grant to assess market opportunities and assist with prototype development, making it possible to fulfill the Army contract. Moreover, ISCA has contracted for commercial manufacturing of its units, which will go on sale in 2007. The U.S. Army plans to deploy ISCA's mosquito trap for field trials in 2007.
You can learn more by visiting the ISCA Technologies Web site: http://www.iscatech.com or by calling (951) 686-5008.
For more information, please contact:
Juli Gandasatria, Sr. Technology Program Manager
Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization
E-mail: jgandasa@csusb.edu
Phone: 909-537-7758 / Fax: 909-537-7450