How Ventera accelerated sustainable biopesticide discovery with Reshape

About Ventera Bio

Founded in 2024 after 15 years of venom peptide research, Ventera Bio, based just outside London, is developing venom-derived biopesticides to enable sustainable crop protection.

By harnessing the natural defense mechanisms found in venom peptides, Ventera designs next-generation insecticides that are effective, targeted, and biodegradable. Their goal is to replace conventional synthetic pesticides that harm ecosystems, with safer, biological alternatives that protect both crops and ecosystems.

The Challenge: Limited time, limited throughput

At Ventera, the development of next-generation biopesticides relies on screening both target pests and non-target species to refine existing peptides and identify new candidates. With limited lab resources and a wide array of required screening, manual workflows restrict throughput and make the desired monitoring frequency impossible.

Steve relied on manual methods and open-source image analysis tools, but the process was slow, low-throughput, and limited to static snapshots. Because insect activity is unpredictable and data collection was restricted to human working hours, each experiment captured only a few manually scored time points,  leaving large gaps and obscuring important insights the data could have revealed.

The Solution: Automated capture for continuous discovery

By adopting Reshape’s R&D platform, Ventera turned slow, manual workflows into automated, high-throughput, and insight-rich processes. The platform automates insect and plant assays through time-lapse imaging that captures insect activity in flies, caterpillars, and tracks leaf area loss as feeding progresses. Ventera is now preparing to extend this workflow to aphid assays.

Setup was fast and intuitive: the platform required no formal training and was producing usable data within a week. Its ability to handle multiple plates simultaneously meant that entire experiment batches could now run unattended, generating high-resolution time-lapse data around the clock.

Reshape’s integrated analysis models and image-linked results provided richer context and deeper data resolution for understanding the impact of the peptide treatments on insect behaviour and mortality, instead of the traditional isolated data points tracking activity every 24 hours.

The Impact: More science, less time in the lab

For Steve Trim, Reshape transformed both workflow and productivity.

With experiments running autonomously through weekends, he could reclaim Fridays for experiment setup and use Mondays for analysis – all while Reshape captured data in between.

“It’s too good to not be running — I always put something in.”

Beyond raw throughput, the ability to visualize results and revisit every frame opened new dimensions of insight — from insect behavior to feeding patterns. Highly detailed time-lapse images, combined with easily toggled annotations, enabled the team to visually validate model performance and trace subtle phenotypic changes that would otherwise be missed.

Looking Ahead

Reshape now underpins Ventera’s ongoing research into ecotoxicity and seed germination assays, helping the team test a broader range of species and environmental interactions. As Ventera scales its sustainable biopesticide platform, automation ensures that even a small team can produce large, reliable datasets fit for partnership with major agricultural players.