Seattle biotech co. to move to Houston thanks to $13.3M grant from Texas organization

CPRIT funding spotted

OncoResponse in partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center received a portion of $73 million the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has doled out this spring. Photo via oncoresponse.com

A biotech company has landed a more than $13 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

The nearly $13.3 million grant given to OncoResponse — which is relocating from Seattle to Houston, according to CPRIT's news release — will help the company develop fully human monoclonal antibodies for treatment of cancer that otherwise would not respond to immunotherapy. OncoResponse already has a partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is one of the company’s investors.

“We are thrilled to receive this recognition from CPRIT in supporting the potential of our immunotherapy candidate OR502. We greatly appreciate the additional support from our investors as we continue to make significant progress with our drug development efforts advancing immunotherapies derived from clues of Elite Responders,” says Clifford Stocks, CEO of OncoResponse, in a news release.

Aside from the grant, OncoResponse just hauled in $14 million from existing investors in a round led by RiverVest Venture Partners. Other participants in the series D round include Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, 3B Future Health Fund, Bering Capital, Takeda Ventures, and InterVest Capital Partners.

To date, OncoResponse has raised more than $180 million, according to market research company CB Insights.

A representative of OncoResponse couldn’t be reached for comment about the company’s relocation to Houston.

MD Anderson and Seattle-based Theraclone Sciences launched OncoResponse in 2015. Rice University was among the inaugural investors.

OncoResponse’s OR2805 immunotherapy product is being evaluated in a Phase 1 clinical trial. It’s the company’s leading immunotherapy candidate. OncoResponse is also working on OR502, an antibody being prepared for investigational and clinical studies.

“The modern treatment of cancer activates the body’s own immune system to attack cancer,” OncoResponse says in a summary posted on the website of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).

“These treatments, called immunotherapy, may not be successful if the cancer can recruit bad-acting cells, such as tumor associated macrophages, or TAMs, that create barriers preventing immunotherapies from activating the body’s own defenses against the cancer. To find drugs that may help counteract these TAMs, OncoResponse looked to patients who had responded very well to immunotherapy to see if their bodies made factors to block TAMs and helped them fight their cancers.”

OncoResponse’s OR502 prevents TAMs from shutting down the body’s response to cancer, thus restoring tumor-killing immune activity, CPRIT explains.

In addition to OncoResponse, recent CPRIT grant recipients from the Houston area are:

  • Houston-based 7 Hills Pharma, $13,439,001. The company is working on immunotherapies for treatment of cancer and prevention of infectious diseases.
  • Houston-based Allterum Therapeutics, $11,721,150. The company is coming up with an antibody for treatment of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. This type of cancer affects blood and bone marrow.
  • Houston-based Cell Therapy Manufacturing Center, $9.1 million. The center is a joint venture between National Resilience and MD Anderson Cancer Center that is developing cell therapy manufacturing technologies to support biotech partnerships.
  • Houston-based Pulmotect, $8,851,165. The company’s PUL-042 product is aimed at treating and preventing respiratory complications in cancer patients.
  • Cancer researcher Michael King, $6 million. The grant helped lure King to Rice from Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, where he’s been the chair of biomedical engineering. King’s lab at Vanderbilt has been testing therapies for metastatic breast cancer and prostate cancer.
  • Missouri City-based OmniNano Pharmaceuticals, $2,711,437. The pharmatech company is working on two drugs for treatment of solid tumors in patients with pancreatic cancer.

“Texas is unique because of CPRIT’s ability to invest in cutting-edge research when private capital is scarce. This is yet another way Texas is leading the nation in the fight against cancer,” Wayne Roberts, CEO of CPRIT, says in a news release.

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CPRIT grants $22M to bring top cancer researchers to Houston

fresh funding

Several prominent cancer researchers are coming to the Houston area thanks to $22 million in grants recently awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).

The biggest CPRIT recruitment grant — $6 million — went to genetics researcher Jean Gautier. Gautier, a professor of genetics and development at Columbia University’s Institute for Cancer Genetics, is joining the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to continue his research.

The website for Gautier’s lab at Columbia provides this explanation of his research:

“The main objective of our research is to better understand the molecular mechanisms responsible for the maintenance of genome stability. These controls are lost in cancer, which is characterized by genomic instability.”

Aside from his work as a professor, Gautier is co-leader of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Cancer Genomics and Epigenomics Program at Columbia.

Other recipients of CPRIT recruitment grants include:

  • $2 million to recruit Xun Sun from the Scripps Research Institute to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
  • $2 million to recruit Mingqi Han from the University of California, Los Angeles to MD Anderson.
  • $2 million to recruit Matthew Jones from Stanford University to MD Anderson.
  • $2 million to recruit Linna An from the University of Washington to Rice University.
  • $2 million to recruit Alissa Greenwald from the Weizmann Institute of Science to MD Anderson.
  • $2 million to recruit Niladri Sinha from Johns Hopkins University to the Baylor College of Medicine.
  • $2 million for Luigi Perelli to stay at MD Anderson so he can be put on a tenure track and set up a research lab.
  • $2 million for Benjamin Schrank to stay at MD Anderson so he can be put on a tenure track and set up a research lab.

Over $20.2 million in academic research grants were awarded to researchers at:

  • Baylor College of Medicine
  • Houston Methodist Research Institute
  • Rice University
  • Texas Southern University
  • University of Houston
  • University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

In addition, nearly $4.45 million in cancer prevention grants were awarded to one researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and another at Texas Southern University.

Also, five Houston businesses benefited from CPRIT grants for product development research:

  • Allterum Therapeutics, $2,999,996
  • CTMC, $1,342,178
  • Instapath, $900,000
  • Prana Surgical, $900,000
  • InformAI, $465,188

“Texas is a national leader in the fight against cancer,” said Kristen Pauling Doyle, CPRIT’s CEO. “We can measure the return on investment from CPRIT grants … not only in the economic benefits flowing from increased financial activity and jobs in the state, but more importantly in the cancers avoided, detected early, and treated successfully. Thanks to the Legislature’s vision, this commitment is saving lives.”

Overall, CPRIT approved 61 grants totaling more than $93 million in this recent round of funding.

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California company to launch Walmart drone delivery in Houston

taking off

California-based Wing will soon touch down in Houston.

The drone delivery company has partnered with Walmart Supercenters in Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando and Tampa. According to a news release, Wing’s drone delivery services will be available at 100 Walmart stores across the selected markets by this time next year.

Wing also plans to expand to additional Walmart stores in Dallas-Fort Worth, where Wing and Walmart already serve customers from 18 Walmart Supercenters. Wing reports that it has completed thousands of deliveries from DFW-area Walmarts with an average fulfillment time of under 19 minutes. Wing and Walmart launched their first location in the Dallas area in the fall of 2023.

"The popularity of drone delivery in DFW is a testament not just to its convenience, but to the way this technology quickly becomes a part of everyday life,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said in the news release. “Walmart has been a strong partner that shares our commitment to innovation and is equally eager to bring this new type of service to many more households.”

Customers in Houston and the other markets in the latest expansion can visit wing.com/walmart to be notified when drone delivery becomes available in their area.

The service works similarly to any other online shopping platform, and users can select the exact location for the drone to drop off their package. Items are packaged in a specialized box that a Wing drone retrieves from Walmart. The drones cruise up to 65 mph and drop off the package outside a shopper's home.

“This is real drone delivery at scale,” Woodworth said in the release. “People all around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex have made drone delivery part of their normal shopping habits over the past year. Now we’re excited to share this ultra-fast delivery experience with millions more people across many more U.S. cities.”

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