Flyttr Announces Launch of Nation’s First Pest Biosecurity Platform, Located in San Antonio, with New World Screwworm as First Target
PR Newswire
SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 8, 2026
SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Flyttr, the leader in biosecurity countermeasures for critical pest threats, today announced plans to build the nation’s first large-scale biosecurity research, development and countermeasures platform in San Antonio, Texas. The platform is being built to give the United States and its allies standing capacity to design, test, produce and deploy countermeasures against the growing and critical pest threats that pose the greatest risk to American lives and livelihoods.
To do so, Flyttr’s U.S. biosecurity platform will address the nation’s critical gaps in the ability to detect, understand, and respond to growing pest threats such as disease-spreading mosquitoes, livestock parasites like the New World screwworm, and pest threats to American agriculture. Flyttr and its partners will place world-class research, engineering, manufacturing, and scale-up operations in one centralized set of facilities, so that a new pest countermeasure can move from concept to production in months, not years. It will also generate economies of scale as more pest countermeasures are developed and scaled, further supporting American interests, allies, communities, and industry partners.
“Pest biosecurity is national security,” said Grey Frandsen, Chief Executive Officer of Flyttr. “This new pest biosecurity platform in San Antonio, the first of its type, will help the U.S. and its allies respond to a range of growing biosecurity threats. The screwworm is the first target, but this builds on Flyttr’s ongoing work in rapidly developing and scaling new pest sentry systems, AI-powered decision-support tools, and advanced biological solutions to target vectors of diseases like dengue and malaria, pest threats to American corn and soy, and to our nation’s forests, the built environment, and industry. Strong partners, hundreds of people and dozens of teams are coming together to make this happen fast, because, as screwworm shows us, we have no time to lose to bolster resilience to these threats. And unprecedented effort requires strong partnerships. We could have no better host and partner than the City of San Antonio nor a better champion of the vision than our federal partners within the U.S. government. It’s game time.”
The platform’s first focus is New World screwworm in a program called FastFly – an accelerated manufacturing initiative to add American-made sterile flies into the national response being led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. FastFly also includes innovation in modular pest countermeasure manufacturing, developing new production systems that can be built fast, moved, and reconfigured for a different pest threat to national security. This adds to Flyttr’s global scale-up infrastructure for biological pest solutions, the largest in the world.
Flyttr has selected San Antonio for its biosecurity headquarters. San Antonio has a strong legacy of more than 100 years of supporting national and agricultural security efforts for the region and the nation. As a result, San Antonio has become a national leadership hub in the biosecurity field, with a concentration of research institutions, biosafety infrastructure and technical talent, anchored by world-class institutions including Texas Biomedical Research Institute.
Flyttr’s first San Antonio facility will exceed 130,000 square feet and is anticipated to rapidly add more than 50 R&D, engineering, operations, and support jobs, growing to more than 100 as the platform scales. It adds to the advanced laboratory facilities Flyttr already operates at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, a strategic partner since June 2026, and Flyttr’s network of advanced R&D and commercial facilities around the world.
Flyttr’s FastFly is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as part of a USDA-led whole-of-government approach.
“Flyttr’s investment in a new San Antonio research and manufacturing facility is an exciting next step forward in our efforts to combat New World screwworm and strengthen our region’s biotech innovation ecosystem,” said Larry Schlesinger, MD, President and CEO at Texas Biomed. “Texas Biomed is proud to partner with Flyttr to help address this urgent challenge.”
About Flyttr
Flyttr is the biosecurity platform for managing the world’s most critical biological threats. The company is U.S.-owned and U.S.-led, with corporate headquarters in Radford, Virginia, biosecurity headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, and R&D and commercial operations globally.
Contact: press@flyttr.com
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SOURCE Flyttr
