Houston-founded startup raises $1.1M seed to fuel growth in bioeconomy

fresh funding

Van Heron Labs, founded at TMC, raised a $1.1 million seed round led by FoodLabs. Photo via Getty Images

A biotech company that was founded at the Texas Medical Center in Houston has raised fresh funding to support its goal of innovating new technologies for a healthier humanity.

Van Heron Labs, based in Huntsville, Alabama, raised a $1.1 million seed round led by FoodLabs, a European investor and venture studio for food, health, and climate. The startup taps into genomics, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology to improve how cells are cultured and harnessed with the mission to address critical industrial and global challenges with biotechnology.

“Van Heron Labs looks forward to using the generous support and funding from FoodLabs to advance our goal of making biological innovation better, faster, and cheaper," Rebecca C. Vaught, founder and CEO of Van Heron Labs, says in a news release. "By fueling the new bio-economy, we feel that our customers can optimize their systems and bring technologies to overcome critical global challenges to market."

Van Heron Labs, which was founded by Vaught, Alec Santiago, and Nithin Parsan in February 2020, originally launched with its cell-focused platform to support COVID-19 pandemic response. The company's cell-based applications also include cancer therapeutics and food and materials production.

“We are excited to lead the funding round in Van Heron Labs, as we firmly believe that their innovative approach to optimizing cellular nutrition has the potential to revolutionize multiple industries, including biopharma, biomanufacturing, foodtech, and agriculture,” Julius Strauss, investor at FoodLabs, says. “We are excited to be partnering with Dr. Rebecca Vaught and her team as they continue to push the boundaries of innovation in the bio-economy.”

The funding will go toward supporting existing and new product lines.

Van Heron Labs' automated flagship platform uses bioinformatics and advanced AI tools to discover the optimal cellular fuel. This information can be used to personalize the customers’ culture media to provide more excellent quality, efficiency, and scalability, per the company.

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Formerly competitors and collaborators in the space race, Houston and Huntsville, Alabama, are now moving the needle on biotech. Getty Images

Houston and former space rival are advancing biotech startups

Guest Column

Before scientists flocked to Boston and Silicon Valley; a tech boom occured in the American south that served as a defining moment for the United States: the Space Race.

At the time, two cities were the epicenters of mankind's desire to elevate its existence into the stars. Astronauts controlled the path of rockets that were built in Huntsville, Alabama, while radioing back and forth with Mission Control in Houston, Texas.

Today, the two cities are still aligned, but the final frontier is closer to home. Houston and Huntsville are currently flourishing in the scope of biotechnology, using the innovative research of thousands of scientists, academics, and clinicians to further human knowledge

Houston is the home to the world's largest medical center — the Texas Medical Center, or TMC — and an impressive community developing cutting-edge companies ranging from med to biotech. However, Huntsville is hot on its heels.

Turning an infrastructure initially dedicated to aerospace and aeronautical innovation into an emerging bioscience hub, Huntsville boasts around 50 biotech companies and a genomic research institute. The ecosystem has the highest concentration of STEM workers per capita in the country and is rallied around a collaborative research environment that boasts an impressive tech portfolio, including resident companies like Blue Origin, Facebook, and Google, while still managing to embody southern hospitality.

Mirroring the concerted efforts of the past, my Houston-born startup, Van Heron Labs, has recently taken a leap of faith in moving much of their laboratory operations to Huntsville, while many core team members remain in Houston. Being frustrated with the options for available and affordable lab space in Houston, the completely bootstrapped Van Heron Labs decided to stretch one foot into Alabama while the other stays rooted in the TMC ecosystem.

One positive upside to the shift to remote work in light of the COVID-19 pandemic are new opportunities for company employees, investors, and mentors to be physically separated, while collaborating and retaining productivity. These new dynamics of distance have allowed Van Heron Labs to expand their technical operations while maintaining ties to Houston.

VHL has recently moved into the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, where they continue to develop their technology surrounding improved culture media, which hasn't changed much since scientists saw the publication of the first Peanuts comic. Recently, VHL has established a collaborative partnership with fellow Huntsville biotech Foresight Biosciences, and the two will be exploring a wealth of industries together.

Despite the distance, VHL still continues heavy involvement in the Houston ecosystem. My co-founder, Alec Santiago, is the current Director of non-profit, Enventure, and uses his experiences of establishing a biotech startup to help prepare the students around him to do the same.

Additionally, VHL currently has 17 interns, including current and former University of Houston students, Rice University graduate students, and even a local physics PhD. VHL has also long been in talks with companies in TMC, where they have established connections dedicated to growth. Ultimately, they hope to bridge the two cities and help give each access to new ideas, resources, funding, and mentorship.

Too often, emerging biotech startups struggle to get off the ground, and a lack of capital limits what could grow to be great ideas. To foster the growth of innovators around the nation several cities are primed to step in and welcome researchers. Institutions within Alabama's biotech ecosystem are leading the movement.

For just $188 a month, biotech startup companies located at HudsonAlpha campus can enjoy their own office space, and access to tailored programming which includes commercial IP assessments, regular investor forums and pitch opportunities, membership in supporting bioscience organizations, discounted laboratory supplies, as well as help with public relations, human relations, finding mentors, capital, and legal help.

VHL has taken full advantage of these opportunities, while maintaining a presence in Houston, and urges others to do the same. The lifting of our nation's innovators as a whole is a positive movement, and one that can increase access to many bright minds. Just as in the space race, working together regardless of geography can offer unlimited potential and may even take us to an entirely new plane.

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Rebecca Vaught is the co-founder of Van Heron Labs.

Rebecca Vaught started her biotech company just ahead of COVID-19, but she shares on the Houston Innovators Podcast that it's meant more opportunities than challenges. Photo courtesy of Van Heron Labs

Entrepreneur hopes to bring microbiology into the future with her Houston-based, pandemic-founded startup

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 40

While startups everywhere are struggling to adapt in the tumultuous times of COVID-19, Rebecca Vaught and her company, having launched just ahead of the pandemic, don't actually know any other way of existing.

After watching some of her friends thrive in Houston's life science ecosystem, she knew Houston was the place she wanted to start the company that she'd been envisioning and plotting for years. She took a chance on the city, moved in, and began Enventure's Biodesign accelerator. The program shutdown as COVID-19 spread, much like other programs, but Vaught wasn't going to let that stop her momentum.

"A lot of people probably would have seen that as the stopping point but that was actually the beginning of the company," Vaught says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "What it allowed us to do was actually establish the lab and do the hard work."

As Vaught says, the biotech company, Van Heron Labs, is what it is thanks to the pandemic — not just in spite of it.

"While it's been challenging, the pandemic — in a lot of ways — is the only thing we've ever known and it's a lot of reason why the company has taken off and been successful," Vaught says on the show.

She runs the company with co-founder Alec Santiago and a team of 17 interns — all located across the country. Vaught herself is currently residing in Huntsville, Alabama, after struggling to find lab space in Houston. However, the relocation has been a blessing in disguise.

"Both ecosystems are extremely unique and both bring something different to the table," she says. "My next mission, through my lived experience, is igniting or uniting the Houston and Huntsville biotech ecosystems."

On the episode, Vaught explains how the two cities — each representing key parts of space exploration history and burgeoning tech scene — complement each other. She also shares her plans for growth and the need to bring microbiology into the future.

Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you get your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


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NASA unveils Artemis III astronauts at Johnson Space Center in Houston

To the moon

NASA on Tuesday, June 9, revealed the crew for its Artemis III mission, the next step in the space agency's plan to eventually land astronauts on the moon.

The announcement came two months after Artemis II's record-breaking trip around the moon that surpassed the distance record of Apollo 13.

NASA's Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano won't fly to the moon or land on the surface. Instead, they’ll orbit Earth while practicing docking their Orion capsule with two lunar landers.

“To the Artemis III crew, we wish you Godspeed on the journey ahead,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to deliver the lunar landers. The two-week demo is targeted for 2027. Blue Origin suffered a recent setback when its massive rocket exploded during an engine-firing test on the launch pad in Florida, shaking nearby homes and illuminating the sky with an orange fireball.

NASA's Jeremy Parsons said the setback is a learning opportunity and that the space agency is confident Blue Origin's rocket will be ready in time.

NASA's Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since the 1970s. A recent revamp of the program announced by Isaacman aims to fast-track it similarly to the Apollo era, adding the upcoming spaceflight around Earth before eyeing a lunar landing in 2028.

“We are certainly humbled as a crew to be able to be your crew that executes this Artemis III mission in space,” said Bresnik, Artemis III commander.

Added Douglas, mission specialist: “My brain — it is going a mile a minute right now. But my heart, it is so warm. It is so full."

In May, NASA awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four companies, including Blue Origin, to build landers, rovers and drones for a future moon base. Isaacman said the goal of the moon base is to lay the foundation for a Mars expedition.

Meta to bring $115 million AI data center training initiative to Houston

ai workforce

Meta and Associated Builders and Contractors have entered into a partnership to invest $115 million in training programs for the construction of AI data centers, with a portion of the project launching in Houston.

The companies announced June 8 that they would open America’s Workforce Academies at ABC chapter training centers in Houston; Indianapolis; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Columbus, Ohio.

The academies will offer career readiness and safety training, plus five weeks of hands-on education. Participants who complete the program will be granted a job offer from contractors working on Meta projects.

“The AI revolution is bringing change but also historic opportunities,” Dina Powell McCormick, Meta president and vice-chairman, said in a news release. “Skilled workers electrified rural America one pole at a time. They manned the factories that built the arsenal that won World War II. Now a new generation will pour the foundations and lay the fiber that secures American strength in this new age.”

Overall, the Meta and ABC aim for the academies to build a more sustainable pipeline of skilled construction workers and ensure safety and job readiness for the surging number of data center projects underway.

“This new program is an innovative talent solution that is a critical part of addressing the construction industry’s ongoing workforce shortage and creates an accelerated, new-entrant strategy for job seekers ... The sustained demand for data center construction technicians means the industry needs an all-of-the-above approach to address this shortage and grow the construction talent pool,” Michael Bellaman, ABC president and CEO, added in the release.

In Texas, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has launched or broken ground on data centers in El Paso, Fort Worth and Temple. The company announced in March that it planned to grow its El Paso Data center by 1 gigawatt, representing more than a $10 billion investment.

Apart from Meta, Texas has attracted data center development to power other giants like Google and Amazon in recent years. In turn, Texas has been predicted to become the biggest data center market. Commercial real estate services provider JLL reported this spring that the state could topple Northern Virginia as the world’s largest data-center market by 2030. Similarly, CBRE predicted that Houston's data center capacity could double by 2028. Read more here.

New Houston biotech co. lands $30M for pulmonary fibrosis drug

drug money

Most of us can claim a scar or two on our bodies. But when scarring develops inside the body, it’s known as a fibrotic disorder. A freshly launched Houston company, Oorja Bio Inc., is working on a treatment that can help to repair cells and reduce the damage wrought by the growth of fibrotic tissue in patients.

Late last month, Oorja Bio hit the scene with a pair of big announcements. Not only has the company raised a $30 million Series A thanks to founding investor California-based Westlake BioPartners, but it has also already paved the way for a Phase 2 study to take place this year.

Oorja Bio received Investigational New Drug (IND) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), allowing the company to test its treatment in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a scarring of the lung tissue. IPF affects more than 150,000 adults in the United States and can result in a range of symptoms from shortness of breath to organ failure and death as it progresses.

Oorja Bio’s lead drug candidate, ORJ-001, was shown in a Phase 1 in-human trial to demonstrate “therapeutically relevant exposure and favorable tolerability” in 64 healthy adult volunteers in whom it was administered daily or weekly, according to a news release. Pre-clinical studies of ORJ-001 showed durable target tissue engagement and biomarker activity in bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis.

Administered subcutaneously, ORJ-001 is intended to improve and even restore function in cells that can reduce the signaling that causes IPF. It stops advancement of IPF and also allows for tissue repair. Currently available treatments for the disease can slow the development of IPF down, but do not address the declining lung function that’s inherent in its progression.

“The clinical and preclinical results from our studies to date give us confidence that ORJ-001 represents a novel treatment approach with the potential to repair and reverse fibrosis and modify disease progression in IPF,” Dr. Janethe Pena, CMO of Oorja Bio, said in the release.

“Our team is energized to deliver on our goal of redefining the future of fibrotic diseases, beginning with ORJ-001,” CEO and founder Sujay Kango added. “As we advance ORJ-001 in the clinic, we are embracing the paradigm shift in our biological understanding of IPF pathology that aligns with the central role of the alveolar epithelium. ORJ-001 was designed with this biology in mind and may provide, for the first time, a therapeutic intervention that repairs and reverses fibrosis and promotes disease modification.”

Most patients live only three to five years following their IPF diagnosis. Soon, ORJ-001 and Oorja Bio could give them a fighting chance.

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