Nazzy Pakpour Speaker Event

Austin Esparza
Mar 8
7 min read

Bugs, Microbes, and Biotech

Written by: Austin Esparza, CSULB Biotechnology Club

The CSULB Biotechnology Club recently welcomed Dr. Nazzy Pakpour as a featured speaker in our Distinguished Speaker Series. Dr. Pakpour is the co-founder and CEO of Yeast Bay Bio, a biotech startup developing RNA-based insect control tools using engineered yeast.

Speaker Info

Dr. Nazzy Pakpour LinkedIn

Yeast Bay Bio

Dr. Pakpour holds a B.S. in Entomology from UC Davis and a Ph.D. in Microbiology, Virology, and Parasitology from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed postdoctoral research at UC Davis, served as an Assistant Professor at Cal State East Bay (2015-2021), and worked as a Senior Scientist at Novozymes, a global biotech company later rebranded as Novonesis, from 2022 to early 2025. In August of 2025, she co-founded Yeast Bay Bio to bring an RNAi-based pest-control concept to the commercial market.

How did your background lead you to co-found Yeast Bay Bio?

The scientific concept, a yeast-delivered RNAi system for pest control, drew on every dimension of her prior training. Her experience in mosquito biology gave her an understanding of insect physiology and behavior. Her teaching and research in microbiology sharpened her knowledge of yeast genetics and expression systems. Her time in industrial biotech gave her firsthand insight into the process of creating a scalable microbial product.

She also credited early exposure, like her internship at the Smithsonian Insect Zoo during the summer between high school and college, for sparking her interest in science. In her own words, the throughline of her career is: "Curiosity made the scientist."

What is RNAi, and why is it promising for pest control?

The core scientific idea behind Yeast Bay Bio is RNA interference (RNAi), a biological process that uses double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) to silence specific genes. When targeted correctly, this disrupts the production of essential proteins in a pest species, ultimately killing or disabling it. RNAi was named "Breakthrough of the Year" by Science magazine in 2002, and its application to pest control has been a growing research area ever since.

RNAi is highly specific because the dsRNA sequence is designed to match only the target pest's genes; non-target organisms are largely unaffected. This makes it an attractive alternative to broad-spectrum chemical pesticides. However, deploying it effectively in the field has been a major bottleneck: dsRNA molecules are fragile, expensive to produce, and easily degraded by sunlight or enzymes in the insect gut.

https://bisresearch.com/insights/how-rnai-pesticides-could-replace-chemical-pesticides-for-good

How does the yeast delivery system solve these problems?

The breakthrough came from research showing that yeast could be engineered to produce insecticidal RNAs, which could then be inactivated and dried for use as pest bait. Because many pest insects, including mosquitoes and fruit flies, are naturally attracted to yeast as a food source, this delivery method is both effective and cost-efficient. The yeast cell wall protects dsRNA from environmental degradation until it is consumed by the pest.

When the yeast is heat-killed and dried, including through lyophilization in some formulations, it can be prepared as a shelf-stable powder, tablet, or baitable format rather than a live GMO product. Published studies describe these yeast insecticides as heat-inactivated and deliverable in ready-to-use tablets or attractive targeted sugar baits, which helps address storage, transport, and deployment constraints.

Key published evidence supporting this approach includes:

Stewart et al. (2023): RNA interference (RNAi) technology could facilitate the custom design of environmentally safe pesticides that target GPCRs in select target pests yet are not toxic to non-target species. This study investigates the hypothesis that an RNAi yeast insecticide designed to silence mosquito serotonin receptor 1 (5-HTR1) genes can kill mosquitoes without harming non-target arthropods. 5-HTR.426, a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain that expresses an shRNA targeting a site specifically conserved in mosquito 5-HTR1 genes, was generated. The yeast can be heat-inactivated and delivered to mosquito larvae as ready-to-use tablets or to adult mosquitoes using attractive targeted sugar baits (ATSBs).

How did you validate the market opportunity and decide to pivot to urban pest control?

Dr. Pakpour initially investigated agricultural markets but found little traction; farmers weren't adopting the technology due to their other expenses and priorities. This led Dr. Pakpour to pivot away from field crops and toward urban pest control operators (PCOs). PCOs face high-stakes resistance challenges in indoor environments and are often more willing to try novel solutions. Largely, many operators already have high-demand for safer and cheaper alternatives to traditional pesticides- Dr. Pakpour’s product does both!

To pressure-test the concept, she sought input from scientists, industry contacts, and pest-control professionals, while using entrepreneurship resources in the UC Davis ecosystem to better understand market fit, regulatory constraints, and early development needs. She also evaluated her own position honestly. The opportunity aligned unusually well with her background in entomology, yeast biology, and industrial microbiology, giving her a combination of skills that was especially well-suited to pursuing it.

Rather than focusing on what she was missing as a first-time founder, she reframed the question: "Don't think about what you're missing, think about what you have that others don't have."

What are TAM, SAM, and SOM, and why does it matter for a startup?

The second half of Dr. Pakpour's talk focused on understanding market need: what does it take to turn a feasible biological idea into an actual product? She introduced the startup market sizing framework:

• TAM (Total Addressable Market): The total global insecticide market, roughly $40 billion and growing. This is 100% of the market if there were no competition or constraints.

• SAM (Serviceable Available Market): The portion of TAM Yeast Bay Bio that it can actually target, in this case, household and structural pest control, not large-scale agriculture.

• SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market): The realistic near-term slice of SAM the startup can capture, shaped by geography, production capacity, and early customer adoption.

https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/marketing-sizing-with-tam-sam-som

Understanding this hierarchy is important when considering the long-term plans for product and company development. While the global number is impressive, Yeast Bay Bio's initial focus is on a much narrower space: safe, indoor-use pest control for PCOs and homeowners.

How much does it cost to bring this product to market?

Dr. Pakpour walked students through feasibility calculations covering production costs, regulatory pathways, customer behavior, and pest operator logistics. Her rough estimate to reach a commercial, field-ready product: just $2 million over two years, covering formulation, testing, regulatory work, and scaled production. For biotech and startups in general, that's a remarkably lean path.

Formulating a heat-killed yeast tablet was itself a strategic decision and the foundation of this product. By using inactivated yeast, the EPA evaluates the dsRNA active ingredient rather than a live GMO, fitting neatly into the agency's existing biochemical pesticide registration framework. The 2023 EPA approval of "Ledprona", the world's first sprayable dsRNA insecticide, demonstrated that this regulatory pathway is already defined and achievable.

Can insects develop resistance to RNAi-based pesticides?

The short answer: technically yes, but it's much harder than with traditional pesticides, and highly manageable. The odds of these insects developing mutation-driven resistance is incredibly low. Unlike conventional insecticides that target a single protein, RNAi operates through a sequence-specific mechanism that engages multiple cellular components. An insect would need to alter the sequence of essential target genes or disable its own RNAi machinery to become resistant.

https://doi.org/10.1111/1744-7917.13208

The key strategy for limiting resistance is multiplexing, or targeting several different genes at once. If, for example, a product contains dsRNAs against three or four essential targets across different biological pathways, an insect would need to evolve multiple workarounds simultaneously in order to survive. That makes resistance less straightforward than it is for many conventional pesticides that rely on a single molecular target.

What advice did Dr. Pakpour have for students interested in biotech careers?

Throughout the talk, Dr. Pakpour emphasized that scientific training doesn't lock you into a single pathway. She shared how her career shifted across academia, industry, and entrepreneurship, and how skills such as experimental design, molecular biology, and collaboration proved just as relevant in business contexts as in the lab.

A few standout pieces of advice:

Embrace your inner unicorn. Dr. Pakpour's combination of entomology, yeast genetics, and industrial microbiology made her uniquely positioned to see an opportunity that no one else had. The same goes for all of us. Your specific mix of experiences and perspectives gives you insights that others simply don't have. Lean into that.
Stay curious and follow the science. Dr. Pakpour's path was anything but linear, but curiosity was the one constant that kept driving her forward.
Never ignore logistics. In business, you have to juggle production costs, regulatory timelines, customer behavior, and supply chains all at once. Science alone is never enough. This may be something you need a team or a contributor to help with.
Innovation doesn't always mean inventing something new. Sometimes it looks like recognizing that a promising tool hasn't been applied to the right problem yet, and being the person who makes that connection.
Reframe your assets. "Don't think about what you're missing, think about what you have that others don't have." Dr. Pakpour didn't walk in with an MBA or startup experience. She walked in with entomology, yeast genetics, industrial fermentation, and a strong network.

Dr. Pakpour in the News

Dr. Pakpour was just featured in a UC ANR Bug Squad article published March 5, 2026, previewing her upcoming seminar at UC Davis on March 11! The piece covers her career journey, her children's book Please Don't Bite Me!, and her vision for Yeast Bay Bio in her own words, including her now-famous quip: "I decided the best way to kill cockroaches might be to start a biotech company." It's a great companion read to this post, check it out: Nazzy Pakpour: 'Curiosity Made the Scientist' -UC ANR Bug Squad

Further Reading and Resources

Scientific Literature