Texas Biomedical Research Institute is teaming up with a British biotech company to fight the New World screwworm fly now threatening wildlife in Texas and its $41 billion cattle industry.
Texas Biomed plans on partnering with Flyttr, formerly known as Oxitec, a private biotech company based in England that specializes in pest management.
Under the agreement, Flyttr researchers will use Texas Biomed’s biosafety labs over the next two years to research improved methods of containing the pest.
New World screwworm is a parasitic fly that lays eggs in the open wound of warm-blooded animals. Once these eggs hatch, they feed off living tissue, which can kill the target animal if left untreated. Although the fly can target humans and house pets, livestock and wildlife are most susceptible, and the public health risk remains very low, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The insect was eradicated in the U.S. and Central America by the early 2000s thanks to an insect control method known as sterile insect technique, or SIT, whereby a large number of sterile male insects are introduced into the population.
This method involves the sterilization of male flies in a lab that are then released into the native population, mating with female flies but producing no offspring, shrinking the population over time.
The insect was once again detected in Mexico in 2024 and slowly migrated toward the U.S.-Mexico border. In early June, the fly was found in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County in South Texas, about 100 miles west of San Antonio — the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm in Texas since 1966. Additional cases have since been confirmed in 11 other Texas counties.
Experts have predicted that it could take 500 million sterile flies released on a weekly basis to control the current outbreak. One sterile-fly-releasing facility is being built in Edinburg, Texas, but it won’t open until 2027 and won’t alone meet the production levels needed for eradication.
Texas Biomed President Dr. Larry Schlesinger said that the Flyttr partnership could result in a sterile-fly-releasing facility in San Antonio, but plans are up in the air.
“The goal is to do that in new facilities in San Antonio,” Schlesinger said, “but that’s still in progress.”
Flyttr will use Texas Biomed’s biosafety labs to study “next-generation genetic approaches” to traditional SIT techniques. Texas Biomed is home to one of few laboratories in the U.S. equipped to study the most dangerous pathogens like Ebola.
“Traditional tools like SIT, while necessary, are not sufficient to win this war,” Flyttr CEO Grey Frandsen said. “We’re mobilizing experts, equipment, technology, partners, and our global infrastructure to develop next-generation solutions that will help give our national response the ability to eradicate this pest effectively and quickly.”
Schlesinger added that the screwworm problem is another example of the research institute needing to respond to crises that, in his view, could have been prevented from the jump.
“These opportunities are coming at a faster pace than ever before in a number of challenge areas,” he said. “The big picture is that it’s still reacting to a crisis.”
