Tag Archives: In2Care

StartLife Alumni Updates – October 2020

Brief updates from StartLife Alumni and Community members.

Major Breakthrough For Malaria-fighter In2care

A malaria-free world? The chances of pulling off this immense mission have taken a great leap forward. The Wageningen-based company InCare Trading company has developed and tested a solution that reduces the chances of malaria infections with an unprecedented result of more than 40% on top of new bednets! With the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation In2Care ran a 5 year long trial project in the Ivory Coast.

“The UN World Health Organization (WHO) is full of praise for our solution”, says Marius de Waard, CEO of In2care, proudly. “To obtain a much desired formal prequalification by the WHO we now need to conduct a second study that supports our first findings. For this repeat study we need $3 million, for which we hope to find funding soon.”

The 3D animation above shows how In2Care EaveTubes lure, block and kill resistant malaria mosquitoes and prevent disease transmission.

Read more about the Ivory Coast Trial by In2Care


CE-Line Wins GreenTech Innovation Concept Award 2020

On 20 October, during the opening of GreenTech Live & Online, the top quality international exhibition for horticulture technologies, CE-Line was named the winner in the Concept category of the GreenTech Innovation Awards. CE-Line develops measuring systems for the water quality of greenhouse horticulture. The innovation award is for the CELINE technology, which adjusts the nutrient solution as desired or to the plant needs.

The jury sees the technology as “a good idea that has not yet been resolved and is a big step forward in very accurate fertilization.”


Corvus Drones Obtains €150k From Rabobank Innovation Fund

Corvus Drones

Corvus Drones is specialized in smart crop monitoring and scouting by a fully automated drone. By partnering with Artificial Intelligence companies’ the company provides solutions for seed germination, crop development, plant stress and disease & pest detection. The loan, which is an initiative of the Innovation Fund Rabobank, provides Dutch early-stage entrepreneurs with a good innovative idea that contributes to the digitization, sustainability and/or vitalization of society, and the opportunity to further develop their plans.


Sigrow Wins Dutch Innovation Prize 2020

Last week Sigrow has won the Topsector T&U* Innovation Prize 2020 (*Dutch Horticulture and Starting Materials Top Sector). Jury chairman Harrij Schmeitz: “Sigrow’s solution measures the status of the plant using a thermal camera. This innovation is the missing link for the Unmanned Growing Concept. This makes it possible to directly control the climate etc. based on “plant value” instead of just “grower input”. Team Sigrow has the potential to make this development a success and to grow into the Fitbit of Horticulture. ” Sigrow wins, among others , a knowledge voucher worth €25,000.


Sponsh Elected As Europe’s Best Social Entrepreneurs 2020

Sponsh won the first prize of the Social Innovation Tournament’s (SIT) ninth edition in the Special Category,  which is dedicated to projects that focus on environment and have a strong focus on biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. In addition to the title ‘Europe’s Best Social Entrepreneurs 2020’, the company won €50k prize money.

Sponsh, developed a temperature-sensitive smart material that produces water from air, using the natural cycles of day and night. Launched in 2018, their first products are water-producing tree guards for reforestation projects, to help young trees survive their first harsh summers. After 10 years, Sponsh will have planted 80 million trees, turned 174 000 ha of degraded land into forests and absorbed 68 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.


Vegger Recognized As Exemplarily Green Deal Sustainable Health Care Initiative

Vertical Farming meets Health Care! Wageningen-based Vegger, a StartHub Wageningen resident, is officially recognized by the RIVM National Institute for Public Health and the Environment as an example of Green Deal Sustainable Health Care.

Vegger makes healthcare facilities ‘green’ by means of high-tech indoor vegetable gardens with edible plants. For more than eighteen months, Vegger has been supplying the healthcare facilities of the Innoforte Foundation with fresh vegetables and herbs. Vegger’s mission, in addition to promoting healthy and local food, is to create a healing environment to promote the well-being of residents in a positive way.

Learn more about Vegger on the RIVM website (in Dutch)


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In2Care Receives €3.5 Million From Bill Gates Foundation To Test New Malaria-prevention Method

Wageningen-based startup In2Care is part of a consortium that has received a total grant of 9,3 million euro from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further develop a new ‘Eave Tubes’ malaria-prevention method, developed in collaboration with researchers in Africa. In2Care receives 3.5 million euro for their part. 

In2Care, that works on the project together with partners in the US, UK and Africa, receives this five-year grant to investigate a new method for preventing the transmission of malaria. The method involves limiting mosquito access to houses by screening windows and installing “eave tubes” that contain a unique type of insecticide-laced netting developed by In2Care that kills the insects as they attempt to enter.

“In 2015 an estimated 438 thousand mostly African children and pregnant women died of malaria,” said In2Care’s Director Bart Knols. “Although we have achieved tremendous progress over the last fifteen years and have saved countless lives by using insecticide-treated bednets and indoor spraying with insecticides, resistance to insecticides in mosquitoes is spreading rapidly which may undermine these fragile gains. Eave tubes combine two approaches: First the house is rendered mosquito-proof and second the tubes represent a novel approach to target mosquitoes as they try to enter the house in search of a blood meal .The beauty of it all is that house occupants don’t need to do anything, it is passive technology.”

Mosquitoes find their way to humans by responding to odors leaving the house. They enter the house through the ‘eave’, the gap between the roof and walls. According to Matthew Thomas, who will head the study at Penn State, African malaria mosquitoes have a strong preference for entering houses at night through eaves — the gaps between the roofs and the walls of houses. The team’s novel eave tube approach involves blocking the eaves and inserting tubes that act like chimneys to funnel human odors to the exterior of the home. Attracted to the human odors, mosquitoes enter the tubes and encounter netting that has been treated with an electrostatic coating that binds insecticidal particles to it. The netting can hold several kinds of powdered insecticides, including biological agents, and has been shown to break resistance with currently recommended insecticides.

“Since insecticide is only used on small pieces of netting in the tubes, the reduction compared to spraying walls of entire houses is massive, making eave tubes highly cost competitive, especially now that more expensive insecticides are needed due to resistance against the cheaper ones” said Knols. “Furthermore, retreatment is easy, as it requires simple replacement of small pieces of netting within the tubes.”

With a previous €5.2 million grant from the EU, the collaborative team of researchers has already conducted a proof-of-concept intervention in which they installed eave tubes in more than 1,800 houses in the Kilombero valley in southern Tanzania. The team found that the eave tubes reduced indoor mosquito densities by up to 90 percent.

The new project funded by the Gates Foundation expands on the previous intervention by installing eave tubes in approximately 6,000 homes in villages in Cote d’Ivoire and Tanzania. The researchers will examine householders in these villages and compare them with equivalent control villages that have not been supplied with eave tubes to determine the effect of the intervention on malaria incidence. The team also will test the mosquitoes caught in the villages for insecticide resistance. Finally, the researchers will conduct socio-economic analyses to determine homeowner acceptance and create strategies for implementation across different regions and market sectors.

“We know that eave tubes can perfectly kill mosquitoes when they contact electrostatic netting; even the ones resistant to insecticides. But that’s not enough to convince policy makers that this approach can be added to the arsenal we have at present. Quite rightly so, before a new approach can be adopted we need to clearly measure the overall impact on disease, not just mosquitoes. That’s what we aim to do in this unique project,” Knols said. “If we are to eradicate malaria from the face of the planet over the next decades it will be essential to move new strategies forward, and especially those that can help to break the vicious circle of insecticide resistance. This is what eave tubes offer.”

 

Source: wur.nl