Perspectives on new strategies for the identification and development of insecticide targets

The discovery and development of new active ingredients to control arthropod populations and circumvent the inevitable evolution of insecticide resistance has been of consistent interest to the field of insecticide science. This interest has resulted in a slow, but steady increase in the diversity of chemical scaffolds and biochemical target sites within the insecticide arsenal over the past 70 years with growth from three biochemical target sites in the 1950s to 22 distinct biochemical targets in 2018. Despite this growth, the number of biochemical target sites for insecticides remains relatively limited when compared to human pharmaceuticals, which has approximately 700 distinct biochemical targets that are targeted by FDA approved drugs. Potential reasons for this large discrepancy between two closely related fields and putative mechanisms to enhance the identification of tractable biochemical targets for insecticides are discussed. Next, this perspective discusses the movement of insecticide science into the genomic era and for comparative purposes, I provide a retrospective analysis of the impact the release of the human genome had to human pharmaceutical development. Based on this analysis and because the fields of insecticide science and human pharmaceuticals mirror each other, researchers in the field of insecticide science would do well to heed the lessons learned by the human pharmaceutical industry and to carefully consider the challenges that arise from genomic approaches for chemical development. Lastly, I pose the question if the field of insecticide science would benefit from adapting an industry-academia model through the generation of industry-sponsored centers of excellence. The goal of this article is not to definitively describe strategies to enhance insecticide development, but rather present different thoughts on agrochemical development that will foster discussions among academic, government, and industry scientists to address current and future problems in the field of insecticide science.