SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Biotech company Flyttr is building a 130,000-square-foot facility on San Antonio’s East Side to develop pest-control technology and produce sterile flies to help combat the New World screwworm and other agricultural threats.
Flyttr, formerly known as Oxitec, is a private U.S.-owned biotech company with operations in several countries. The company also partners with the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, using its laboratories to develop methods to control the parasitic fly.
CEO Grey Frandsen said Flyttr chose San Antonio because of its partnership with Texas Biomed, the city’s cooperation with the federal government and its proximity to areas affected by the screwworm outbreak.
The company plans to use the new facility for research, development and sterile-fly production. It aims to bring the facility online and start producing flies within 180 days.
“It’s really aggressive,” Frandsen said.
The facility will use sterile insect technique, or SIT, which involves breeding and sterilizing male flies before releasing them into wild populations. The sterile males then compete with fertile males for mates, reducing reproduction.
The United States used SIT to eradicate New World screwworm from Texas in the 1960s and from Central America in the early 2000s.
New World screwworm lays eggs in open wounds on warm-blooded animals, including livestock and wildlife. After the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on living tissue and can kill untreated animals.
The pest reappeared in Mexico in 2024 and moved toward the U.S.-Mexico border. In early June, authorities confirmed a case in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County, about 100 miles southwest of San Antonio. It marked the first confirmed New World screwworm case in Texas and the United States since 1966.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has since reported 49 animal cases across South, Central and West Texas. Two cases remain active, according to the agency’s dashboard. No cases have occurred in Bexar County, although authorities confirmed a cattle case in neighboring Medina County in late June.
USDA currently releases hundreds of millions of sterile flies into Texas from production facilities in Mexico and Panama. Experts have estimated that controlling the outbreak could require weekly releases of about 500 million sterile flies.
A larger sterile-fly production facility under construction in Edinburg, Texas, is not expected to begin production until 2027.
Flyttr plans to develop more efficient ways to control the screwworm that could require fewer sterile flies. The company also wants to develop modular production systems that could move closer to outbreak areas.
Current SIT operations produce sterile flies at centralized facilities, then ship them to affected areas for release, often from aircraft.
Flyttr also plans to develop pest-control technologies targeting other agricultural pests and disease-carrying mosquitoes, including those that transmit dengue and malaria.
“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.”
Frandsen said the facility could also allow government agencies and other partners to respond faster to emerging biological threats.
“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.”