BugBiome, a Cambridgeshire business working on reinventing pest control, was awarded £99,996 in funding through Innovate UK’s Launchpad programme for Eastern England.

Founded in 2021, BugBiome’s mission is to create safer pest control solutions by harnessing natural microbiomes through its high-throughput screening platform. 
 
The idea started when Dr Alicia Showering, founder of BugBiome, was doing fieldwork in The Gambia and was shocked at the state of mosquito repellents.  
 
“My PhD research showed that there are differences in the skin microbiome between people like me who get attacked by mosquitos and my friends who hardly get bitten at all,” said Dr Showering. 
 
“The Launchpad funding gave us the opportunity to investigate if the same is true for crops.” 
 
The business was awarded the funding from the Minimal Financial Assistance (MFA) strand of the Launchpad programme, designed for projects that grow innovation activities in the agri-tech and food technology industry. 
 
“For this project we are comparing the microbiome composition between crops that are highly attractive to insects and those that aren’t when grown in the same field,” said Dr Showering. 
 
“If we can identify any microbes that are different in the less attractive crops, we can further investigate these and see if it’s possible to use them to create natural insect repellents.” 
 
The Launchpad funding also allowed BugBiome to partner with a team at Harper Adams University.  
 
“We worked with Dr Tom Pope and his team from the university to run a field trial setting up tents of rapeseed and releasing insects to identify crops with differential attractiveness.” 
 
The business has also been focused on setting up a platform, AvidX, that allows the capture of microbes that were previously unculturable. It has the ability to screen these with insects to investigate their pest control ability.  
 
The next phase of the project is to complete the molecular microbiology work and screen the microbes using AvidX to see if any insect repellents or bioinsecticides can be identified.  
 
BugBiome has been successful in securing another round of funding from the Launchpad programme to support this next phase of development. 
 
The next round of the Launchpad programme for Eastern England is now open. 

It offers a share of up to £2.5 million in two strands: