A biotech company specializing in pest management has chosen San Antonio as its base of operations against New World screwworm and other pests threatening American agriculture.
Flyttr, formerly known as Oxitec, is a private U.S.-owned biotech company with an international footprint.
In July, Texas Biomedical Research Institute announced it was partnering with Flyttr, which is using the research institute’s labs to develop improved methods of combating the parasitic fly.
Now, Flyttr is also building a 130,000-square-foot facility on the East Side of San Antonio. Here, the company will host its research and development operations and aid in the fight against New World screwworm by producing sterile flies, a method known as sterile insect technique, or SIT.
The company’s CEO Grey Frandsen said San Antonio was the natural choice for the new facility given its existing partnership with Texas Biomed, the city’s collaboration with the federal government and its proximity to the outbreak area.
The company also plans on developing pest management technology beyond New World screwworm, targeting other pests that threaten agriculture as well as disease-carrying mosquitoes.
“What we’re trying to do here isn’t just local fogging trucks,” Frandsen said. “What we’re trying to do here is build this capability … this architecture nationally. And we think San Antonio has exactly the right DNA for that.”
New World screwworm
New World screwworm is a parasitic fly that lays eggs in the open wound of warm-blooded animals, mostly livestock and wildlife, but also house pets in rare cases. Once these eggs hatch, they feed off living tissue, which can kill the target animal if left untreated.
The pest was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s and from Central America in the early 2000s. But it 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 southwest of San Antonio. It was the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm in Texas and the U.S. since 1966.
Since then, 49 total animal cases have been reported in South, Central and West Texas, with two active cases currently, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s dashboard. No cases have been detected in Bexar County, but there was a confirmed case in cattle in neighboring Medina County in late June.
The traditional method of containing New World screwworm is SIT, which involves breeding and sterilizing male flies and then releasing hundreds of millions of them into the fly population. It’s the same way the pest was eradicated from Texas and Central America. But it requires a lot of flies and large facilities to produce enough of them to be effective.
USDA has been releasing hundreds of millions of sterile flies into Texas counties from production facilities in Mexico and Panama. Experts have predicted that it could take 500 million sterile flies released on a weekly basis to control the current outbreak.
A large-scale sterile-fly-releasing facility is being built in Edinburg, Texas, but it won’t start producing sterile flies until 2027.
Flyttr’s goal is to get the East Side facility online and producing sterile flies within 180 days. “It’s really aggressive,” Frandsen said.
The production facility will be much smaller than the one in Edinburg, but the company will also be researching more efficient methods of containing New World screwworm that require fewer flies.
The Flyttr team is also seeking to develop modular production techniques that could be moved to outbreak areas. Currently, sterile flies are produced at manufacturing sites, shipped to areas where they’re needed and then released, usually from a plane.
Although the company’s priority is New World screwworm, it plans to extend its pest management technology to combat dengue, malaria and the array of other pests that threaten crops and livestock.
Such biothreats are accelerating due to climate change, increased trade and pests’ adaptations to pesticides over time.
“This facility is envisioned as a place where we’re giving government and our other partners the ability to say ‘We’re worried about this problem,'” Frandsen said. “Let’s get a countermeasure moving through an accelerated timeline in a facility where all the right minds are co-located so we can move fast.”
