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Scientists at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee have discovered a chemical compound which could produce an insect repellent thousands of times more effective than anything now available. The discovery came accidentally during research to find new ways of fighting malaria.

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Anopheles are responsible for over a million malaria deaths globally each year.

Scientists all over the world have spent many years and millions of research dollars trying to find scientific solutions to the malaria scourge.

Dr. Patrick Jones and his colleagues believe they might just have found one, and much more.

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His experiments required the removal and crushing of the mosquitoes' antennae which house the olfactory system.

Jones then bombarded the crushed antennae with more than 117,000 different chemical compounds to see if any would effect the insect's olfactory receptor cells.

One of them did.

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The compound, called VUAA1, works on flies, moths and ants as well as it does on the Anopheles mosquito.

Mosquitoes and other insects rely on individual receptors to detect specific smells that trigger a response in the brain.

VUAA1 throws that system into chaos by confusing the insect with overwhelming and contradictory signals.

[...]

And if the mosquito can't smell human blood, it won't see humans as a source of food.

The same principal applies to other insects such as crop-eating locusts or flies that are attracted to human sweat.

The scientists believe their discovery has great potential.

[...]

Vanderbilt University has filed for a patent on the newly discovered compound and, while commercial development will take millions of dollars and years of further testing, a truly effective repellent for malaria, dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases is now a real possibility.