SHORT STORIES

3 Houston tech startups name new leadership members

These fast-growing companies have new personnel announcements to share. Photos courtesy

Three Houston startups have new hires they're excited about. From new board members to C-level execs, here's who's moving and shaking in Houston innovation.

Software company hires new product exec

Photo courtesy of Cart.com

Cart.com, an end-to-end e-commerce services provider, announced Michael Svatek as the company's first chief product officer. Formerly, Svatek served as chief product and strategy officer at Bazaarvoice and then co-founded and served as the CEO and head of product at Rivet Works, a cloud software platform.

"Michael's deep expertise across the e-commerce technology value chain coupled with his experience in M&A, strategic alliances, and entrepreneurship are one-of-a-kind in this industry, and a testament to our growth and trajectory at Cart.com," says Omair Tariq, Cart.com co-founder and CEO, in a news release. "We are so pleased to welcome Michael, a proven leader with an innate understanding of the Cart.com mission to unify and streamline the fragmented e-commerce value chain for brands of any size."

Earlier this year, Cart.com raised a $25 million series A funding round and emerged from stealth mode.

Fast-growing e-commerce startup lawyers up

Photo courtesy of GoExpedi

Houston-based GoExpedi, another tech company disrupting e-commerce, once again expanded its executive board, naming Julie Gremillion as general counsel. She has more than 10 years of experience in working with energy companies, and will lead the company's legal strategy, managing compliance and risk throughout the organization, and more.

"We are thrilled to have found Julie, one of the most experienced, savvy and well-rounded legal counsels in the industry," says Tim Neal, GoExpedi CEO, in a news release. "Her legal background in the energy space is beyond reproach. As we enter this next critical phase of growth, Julie's combined commercial and legal expertise will provide us with a platform for long-term and sustainable success."

GoExpedi also recently fundraised a $25 million round last fall.

Recently acquired therapeutics company adds board member

Photo via aiche.org

Clinical-stage biotechnology company, Coya Therapeutics Inc. has appointed Ann Lee., senior vice president of Cell Therapy Development and Operations at Bristol Myers Squibb, to the company's board of directors.

"Dr. Lee is one of the leading cell therapy technical development, supply chain and manufacturing executives in the biopharmaceutical industry," says Howard Berman, Coya CEO, says in a release. "At Coya, we are revolutionizing cell therapy manufacturing and supply chain management via proprietary cryopreservation to overcome prior limitations of Treg cell therapies. Dr. Lee's expertise will be instrumental as we advance in the clinic and build out manufacturing partnerships."

The company, which focuses on creating therapeutics for neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, announced earlier this year that it has completed a merger with Nicoya Health Inc. and raised $10 million in its series A.

Trending News

 
 

Promoted

A research team housed out of the newly launched Rice Biotech Launch Pad received funding to scale tech that could slash cancer deaths in half. Photo via Rice University

A research funding agency has deployed capital into a team at Rice University that's working to develop a technology that could cut cancer-related deaths in half.

Rice researchers received $45 million from the National Institutes of Health's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, to scale up development of a sense-and-respond implant technology. Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh leads the team developing the technology as principal investigator.

“Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we’ll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time,” he says in a news release. “This kind of ‘closed-loop therapy’ has been used for managing diabetes, where you have a glucose monitor that continuously talks to an insulin pump. But for cancer immunotherapy, it’s revolutionary.”

Joining Veiseh on the 19-person research project named THOR, which stands for “targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation,” is Amir Jazaeri, co-PI and professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The device they are developing is called HAMMR, or hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator.

“Cancer cells are continually evolving and adapting to therapy. However, currently available diagnostic tools, including radiologic tests, blood assays and biopsies, provide very infrequent and limited snapshots of this dynamic process," Jazaeri adds. "As a result, today’s therapies treat cancer as if it were a static disease. We believe THOR could transform the status quo by providing real-time data from the tumor environment that can in turn guide more effective and tumor-informed novel therapies.”

With a national team of engineers, physicians, and experts across synthetic biology, materials science, immunology, oncology, and more, the team will receive its funding through the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, a newly launched initiative led by Veiseh that exists to help life-saving medical innovation scale quickly.

"Rice is proud to be the recipient of the second major funding award from the ARPA-H, a new funding agency established last year to support research that catalyzes health breakthroughs," Rice President Reginald DesRoches says. "The research Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh is doing in leading this team is truly groundbreaking and could potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. This is the type of research that makes a significant impact on the world.”

The initial focus of the technology will be on ovarian cancer, and this funding agreement includes a first-phase clinical trial of HAMMR for the treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer that's expected to take place in the fourth year of THOR’s multi-year project.

“The technology is broadly applicable for peritoneal cancers that affect the pancreas, liver, lungs and other organs,” Veiseh says. “The first clinical trial will focus on refractory recurrent ovarian cancer, and the benefit of that is that we have an ongoing trial for ovarian cancer with our encapsulated cytokine ‘drug factory’ technology. We'll be able to build on that experience. We have already demonstrated a unique model to go from concept to clinical trial within five years, and HAMMR is the next iteration of that approach.”

Trending News

 
 

Promoted