TMC names 2025 cohort of cancer treatment innovators

ready to grow

Innovators in immunotherapy, precision drug discovery, monoclonal antibodies, and diagnostic and therapeutic technologies have joined TMC's Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics. Photo courtesy TMC.

Texas Medical Center Innovation has named more than 50 health care innovators to the fifth cohort of its Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics (ACT).

The group specializes in immunotherapy, precision drug discovery, monoclonal antibodies, and diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, according to a statement from TMC.

During the nine-month ACT program, participants will enjoy access to a network of mentors, grant-writing support, chemistry resources, and the entrepreneur-in-residence program. The program is designed to equip participants with the ability to secure investments, develop partnerships, and advance the commercialization of cancer therapeutics in Texas.

“With over 35 million new cancer cases predicted by 2050, the urgency to develop safer, more effective, and personalized treatments cannot be overstated,” Tom Luby, chief innovation officer at Texas Medical Center, said in a news release.

Members of the new cohort are:

  • Alexandre Reuben, Kunal Rai, Dr. Cassian Yee, Dr. Wantong Yao, Dr. Haoqiang Ying, Xiling Shen, and Zhao Chen, all of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • Dr. Andre Catic and Dr. Martin M. Matzuk, both of the Baylor College of Medicine
  • Cynthia Hu and Zhiqiang An, both of UTHealth Houston
  • Christopher Powala, Aaron Sato, and Mark de Souza, all of ARespo Biopharma
  • Daniel Romo, Dr. Susan Bates, and Ken Hull, all of Baylor University
  • Eugene Sa & Minseok Kim, both of CTCELLS
  • Gomika Udugamasooriya and Nathaniel Dawkins, both of the University of Houston
  • Dr. Hector Alila of Remunity Therapeutics
  • Iosif Gershteyn and Victor Goldmacher, both of ImmuVia
  • João Seixas, Pedro Cal, and Gonçalo Bernardes, all of TargTex
  • Ken Hsu and Yelena Wetherill, both of the University of Texas at Austin
  • Luis Martin and Dr. Alberto Ocaña, both of C-Therapeutics
  • Dr. Lynda Chin, Dr. Keith Flaherty, Dr. Padmanee Sharma, James Allison, and Ronan O’Hagan, all of Project Crest/Apricity Health
  • Michael Coleman and Shaker Reddy, both of Metaclipse Therapeutics
  • Robert Skiff and Norman Packard, both of 3582.ai
  • Rolf Brekken, Uttam Tambar, Ping Mu, Su Deng, Melanie Rodriguez, and Alexander Busse, all of UT Southwestern Medical Center
  • Ryan Swoboda and Maria Teresa Sabrina Bertilaccio, both of NAVAN Technologies
  • Shu-Hsia Chen and Ping-Ying Pan, both of Houston Methodist
  • Thomas Kim, Philipp Mews, and Eyal Gottlieb, all of ReEngage Therapeutics
The ACT launched in 2021 and has had 77 researchers and companies participate. The group has collectively secured more than $202 million in funding from the NIH, CPRIT and venture capital, according to TMC.
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Dr. Jenny Chang's cancer research has generated more than $35 million in funding for Houston Methodist. Photo courtesy Houston Methodist

Houston hospital names leading cancer scientist as new academic head

new hire

Houston Methodist Academic Institute has named cancer clinician and scientist Dr. Jenny Chang as its new executive vice president, president, CEO, and chief academic officer.

Chang was selected following a national search and will succeed Dr. H. Dirk Sostman, who will retire in February after 20 years of leadership. Chang is the director of the Houston Methodist Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center and the Emily Herrmann Presidential Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research. She has been with Houston Methodist for 15 years.

Over the last five years, Chang has served as the institute’s chief clinical science officer and is credited with strengthening cancer clinical trials. Her work has focused on therapy-resistant cancer stem cells and their treatment, particularly relating to breast cancer.

Her work has generated more than $35 million in funding for Houston Methodist from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, according to the health care system. In 2021, Dr. Mary Neal and her husband Ron Neal, whom the cancer center is now named after, donated $25 million to support her and her team’s research on advanced cancer therapy.

In her new role, Chang will work to expand clinical and translational research and education across Houston Methodist in digital health, robotics and bioengineered therapeutics.

“Dr. Chang’s dedication to Houston Methodist is unparalleled,” Dr. Marc L. Boom, Houston Methodist president and CEO, said in a news release. “She is committed to our mission and to helping our patients, and her clinical expertise, research innovation and health care leadership make her the ideal choice for leading our academic mission into an exciting new chapter.”

Chang is a member of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Stand Up to Cancer Scientific Advisory Council. She earned her medical degree from Cambridge University in England and completed fellowship training in medical oncology at the Royal Marsden Hospital/Institute for Cancer Research. She earned her research doctorate from the University of London.

She is also a professor at Weill Cornell Medical School, which is affiliated with the Houston Methodist Academic Institute.

CellChorus announced that the company, along with The University of Houston, has been awarded up to $2.5 million in funding. Photo via Getty Images

University of Houston-founded company secures $2.5M in NIH grant funding

all in the timing

You could say that the booming success of Houston biotech company CellChorus owes very much to auspicious TIMING. Those six letters stand for Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids, a platform for dynamic single-cell analysis.

This week, CellChorus announced that the company, along with The University of Houston, has been awarded up to $2.5 million in funding from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institute of Health. A $350,000 Phase I grant is already underway. Once predetermined milestones are achieved, this will lead to a two-year $2.1 million Phase II grant.

The TIMING platform was created by UH Single Cell Lab researchers Navin Varadarajan and Badri Roysam. TIMING generates high-throughput in-vitro assays that quantitatively profile interactions between cells on a large scale, particularly what happens when immune cells confront target cells. This has been especially useful in the realm of immuno-oncology, where it has demonstrated its power in designing novel therapies, selecting lead candidates for clinical trials and evaluating the potency of manufactured cells.

“By combining AI, microscale manufacturing and advanced microscopy, the TIMING platform yields deep insight into cellular behaviors that directly impact human disease and new classes of therapeutics,” says Rebecca Berdeaux, chief scientific officer at CellChorus. “The generous support of NCATS enables our development of computational tools that will ultimately integrate single-cell dynamic functional analysis of cell behavior with intracellular signaling events.”

Houston’s CellChorus Innovation Lab supports both the further development of TIMING and projects for early-access customers. Those customers include top-25 biopharmaceutical companies, venture-backed biotechnology companies, a leading comprehensive cancer center and a top pediatric hospital, says CEO Daniel Meyer.

CellChorus’s publications include papers written in collaboration with researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Methodist, MD Anderson, Texas Children’s Hospital, the University of Texas and UTHealth in journals including Nature Cancer, Journal of Clinical Investigation and The Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer.

The new Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) award will specifically support the development of a scalable integrated software system conceived with the goal of analyzing cells that are not fluorescently labeled. This label-free analysis will be based on new AI and machine learning (ML) models trained on tens of millions of images of cells.

“This is an opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence methods for advancing the life sciences,” says Roysam. “We are especially excited about its applications to advancing cell-based immunotherapy to treat cancer and other diseases.”

The Houston-born-and-bred company couldn’t have a more appropriate home, says Meyer.

“Houston is a premier location for clinical care and the development of biotechnology and life sciences technologies. In particular, Houston has established itself as a leader in the development and delivery of immune cell-based therapies,” the CEO explains. “As a spin-out from the Single Cell Lab at the University of Houston, we benefit from working with world-class experts at local institutions.”

In May, the company received a similar $2.5 million SBIR grant from NCATS at the NIH. Also this summer, CellChorus's technology was featured in Nature Cancer.

A University of Houston researcher has reported a 98.7-percent rate of accuracy for a method pioneered by his lab to identify cancers at their earliest stages. Photo via Getty Images

Houston researcher advances promising early-stage cancer diagnosis method

hi, tech

Could detecting cancer one day be as easy as taking a blood test? Wei-Chuan Shih, a University of Houston researcher and Cullen College of Engineering professor of electrical and computer engineering, has reported a 98.7-percent rate of accuracy for a method pioneered by his lab to identify cancers at their earliest stages.

The technology combines Shih’s own PANORAMA (PlAsmonic NanO-apeRture lAbel-free iMAging) with fluorescent imaging to view nanometer-sized membrane sacs, called extracellular vesicles or EVs. EVs carry different types of cargo, including proteins, nucleic acids and metabolites, throughout the bloodstream.

“We observed differences in small EV numbers and cargo in samples taken from healthy people versus people with cancer and are able to differentiate these two populations based on our analysis of the small EVs,” reports Shih, in Nature Communications Medicine. “The findings came from combining two imaging methods – our previously developed method PANORAMA and imaging of fluorescence emitted by small EVs—to visualize and count small EVs, determine their size and analyze their cargo.”

Shih introduced PANORAMA in 2020. The technology uses a glass side covered with gold nano discs that allows users to monitor changes in the transmission of light as well as determine the characteristics of nanoparticles as small as 25 nanometers in diameter. For the new publication, Shih and his team just had to count the number of small EVs in order to detect cancer.

“Using a cutoff of 70 normalized small EV counts, all cancer samples from 205 patients were above this threshold except for one sample, and for healthy samples, from 106 healthy individuals, all but three were above this cutoff, giving a cancer detection sensitivity of 99.5% and specificity of 97.3%,” says Shih.

The team was able to report 100-percent accuracy with further testing that analyzed two independent sets of samples from stage I-IV or recurrent leiomyosarcoma/gastrointestinal stromal tumors and early-and-late-stage cholangiocarcinoma combined with healthy samples.

Shih and collaborator Steven H. Lin have founded Seek Diagnostics with the goal of commercializing the technology that they’ve innovated. In 2022, the duo joined the Texas Medical Center Innovation's cancer-focused accelerator.


Wei-Chuan Shih is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering. Photo via UH.edu

“This breakthrough technology has the potential to reshape the landscape of disease treatment and the future of research and development in the field of cell-based therapies." Photo via Getty Images

Rice lab cooks up breakthrough 'living pharmacy' research for potential cell therapy treatment

biotech innovation

Rice University’s Biotech Launchpad has created an electrocatalytic on-site oxygenator, or ecO2, that produces oxygen intended to keeps cells alive. The device works inside an implantable “living pharmacy,” which the Rice Biotech Launch Pad team believes will one day be able to administer and regulate therapeutics within a patient’s body.

Last week, Rice announced a peer-reviewed publication in Nature Communications detailing the development of the novel rechargeable device. The study is entitled “Electrocatalytic on-site oxygenation for transplanted cell-based-therapies.”

How will doctors use the “living pharmacy?” The cell-based therapies implanted could treat conditions that include endocrine disorders, autoimmune syndromes, cancers and neurological degeneration. One major challenge standing in the way of bringing the technology beyond the theoretical has been ensuring the survival of cells for extended periods, which is necessary to create effective treatments. Oxygenation of the cells is an important component to keeping them alive and healthy and the longer they remain so, the longer the therapeutics will be helpful.

Other treatments to deliver oxygen to cells are ungainly and more limited in terms of oxygen production and regulation. According to Omid Veiseh, associate professor of bioengineering and faculty director of the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, oxygen generation is achieved with the ecO2 through water splitting that is precisely regulated using a battery-powered, wirelessly controlled electronic system. New versions will have wireless charging, which means it could last a patient’s entire lifetime.

“Cell-based therapies could be used for replacing damaged tissues, for drug delivery or augmenting the body’s own healing mechanisms, thus opening opportunities in wound healing and treatments for obesity, diabetes and cancer, for example. Generating oxygen on site is critical for many of these ‘biohybrid’ cell therapies: We need many cells to have sufficient production of therapeutics from those cells, thus there is a high metabolic demand. Our approach would integrate the ecO2 device to generate oxygen from the water itself,” says Jonathan Rivnay of Northwestern University, who co-led the study with Tzahi Cohen-Karni of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

The study’s co-first authors are Northwestern’s Abhijith Surendran and CMU’s Inkyu Lee.

Northwestern leads the collaboration with Rice to produce therapeutics onsite within the device. The research supports a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) cooperative agreement worth up to $33 million to develop the implantable “living pharmacy” to control the human body’s sleep and wake cycles.

“This breakthrough technology has the potential to reshape the landscape of disease treatment and the future of research and development in the field of cell-based therapies. We are working toward advancing this technology into the clinic to bring it one step closer to those in need,” says Veiseh.

7 Hills Pharma, an innovative immunotherapy company, was awarded a $13.5 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Photo via Getty Images

Houston immunotherapy company to use $13.5M grant to further develop cancer treatments

future of pharma

Between Bangalore and Chennai in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, you’ll find the town of Tirupati. It’s home to seven peaks that host a Hindu temple complex devoted to a form of Vishnu, Venkateshvara. It is also the region from which Upendra Marathi originally hails. It’s where his father, and many other family members, attended medical school.

“My father’s first job was to take care of the pilgrims,” recalls Marathi.

It's only natural that his groundbreaking Houston company would be named 7 Hills Pharma.

“That sort of selflessness and giving back, I wanted to embody it in the name of the company,” Marathi says.

Now, 7 Hills Pharma is announcing that last month, it was awarded a $13.5 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). That’s on top of more than $13 million in NIH grants, making the company the second largest recipient of SBIR/STTR grants in Texas.

Launched in 2016, 7 Hills Pharma is working to develop drugs that can overcome the all-too-common problem of immunotherapy resistance. Thanks to the Nobel Prize-winning work of Jim Allison in the realm of immuno-oncology, the field was “very hot” at the time, says Marathi, particularly in Houston.

So what has 7 Hills developed? Oral small molecules that activate integrins — the receptors that allow cells to bind to one another — allowing for the cell-to-cell interactions that create a successful immune response to immune checkpoint inhibitors such as Yervoy. In other words, they have created capsules that increase the effectiveness of drugs that allow the body’s own immune response to fight cancers.

But that’s not all. Tests have shown that the same discovery, called alintegimod, can also augment the effectiveness of vaccines. The pill, which co-founder and co-inventor Peter Vanderslice calls “a beautiful way to amplify the vaccines,” can potentially be applied to anything from influenza to coronavirus.

Their greatest challenge, says Vanderslice, is the very fact that the technology is so novel.

“Most large pharmas are very risk averse,” he explains. “They only want to do ‘me-too’ kinds of drugs.”

7 Hills Pharma is the third company Marathi, both a PhD and an MBA, has helped to found based on technology he co-invented. Vanderslice is director of the molecular cardiology research laboratories at The Texas Heart Institute.

“It’s very much a homegrown company,” Marathi says.

And a small one, at least for now. Working out of JLabs@TMC, the full-time team is currently just Marathi and Siddhartha De, the senior director of development. Marathi convinced De to transplant himself and his family from India for the purpose of assisting 7 Hills with preparing its drugs for clinical readiness.

The CPRIT funds will allow 7 Hills Pharma to hire several long-time team members full-time and with benefits.

“The bringing of talent and bringing of technology to TMC and what was born at Texas Heart Institute is rather remarkable,” says Rob Bent, the company’s director of operations.

The next step for 7 Hills Pharma is a Phase Ib/IIa clinical trial in patients with treatment-resistant solid tumors. And the team just finalized the deck that will help raise another $10 million to $250 million in the company’s series A. And hopefully sooner rather than later, a new set of medical pilgrims will be thanking 7 Hill Pharma for its care.

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10 promising Houston startups that made headlines in 2025

year in review

Editor's note: As we reflect on 2025, we're looking back at the stories and startups that made waves in Houston's innovation scene. These 10 startups reached memorable milestones, won prestigious awards, found creative solutions, and disrupted their industries.

Persona AI: Houston humanoid robotics startup inks new deal to deploy its rugged robots

A concept design rendering of Persona AI's humanoid robot. The company is expanding at the Ion and plans to deliver prototype humanoids by the end of 2026 for complex shipyard welding tasks. Rendering courtesy Persona AI.

Persona AI is building modularized humanoid robots that aim to deliver continuous, round-the-clock productivity and skilled labor for "dull, dirty, dangerous, and declining" jobs. The company was founded by Houston entrepreneur Nicolaus Radford, who serves as CEO, along with CTO Jerry Pratt and COO Jide Akinyode. It raised $42 million in pre-seed funding this year and is developing its prototype of a robot-welder for Hyundai's shipbuilding division, which it plans to unveil in 2026. The company won in the Deep Tech Business category at this year's Houston Innovation Awards. Continue reading.

Rheom Materials: Houston startup unveils its innovative leather alternative at the rodeo

Rheom Materials presented its bio-based alternative, Shorai, a 93 percent bio-based leather, at the rodeo and plans to scale it up this year. Photos courtesy Rheom Materials

Rheom Materials presented its scalable, bio-based alternative known as Shorai, a 93 percent bio-based leather, through two custom, western-inspired outfits that showed off cowboy flair through a sustainable lens at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo earlier this year.

Next up, the company said it aimed to scale production of Shorai, the Japanese word for “future,” at a competitive price point, while also reducing its carbon footprint by 80 percent when compared to synthetic leather. The company also made a large-scale production partnership with a thermoplastic extrusion and lamination company, Bixby International, this year. Continue reading.

Koda Health: Houston digital health platform Koda closes $7 million funding round

Tatiana Fofanova and Dr. Desh Mohan, founders of Koda Health, which recently closed a $7 million series A. Photo courtesy Koda Health.

Houston-based digital advance care planning company Koda Health closed an oversubscribed $7 million series A funding round this year. The round, led by Evidenced, with participation from Mudita Venture Partners, Techstars and Texas Medical Center, will allow the company to scale operations and expand engineering, clinical strategy and customer success. Koda Health, saw major growth this year by integrating its end-of-life care planning platform with Dallas-based Guidehealth in April and with Epic Systems in July. The company won the Health Tech Business category at the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards. Continue reading.

Veloci Running: Student-led startup runs away with prestigious prize at Rice competition

The H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge awarded $100,000 in equity-free funding to student-led startups, including first-place finisher Veloci Running. Photo courtesy of Rice University.

Veloci Running took home the first-place prize and $50,000 at the annual Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge. The company was founded by Tyler Strothman, a former track and field athlete and senior at Rice, majoring in sport management. Inspired by the foot pain he suffered due to the narrow toe boxes in his running shoes, Strothman decided to create a naturally shaped shoe designed to relieve lower leg tightness and absorb impact. Additional prize winners included SteerBio, Kinnections, Labshare and several others. Continue reading.

Square Robot Inc.: Houston robotics co. unveils new robot that can handle extreme temperatures

The new robot eliminates the need for humans to enter dangerous and toxic environments. Photo courtesy of Square Robot

Houston- and Boston-based Square Robot Inc.'s newest tank inspection robot became commercially available and certified to operate at extreme temperatures this fall. The new robot, known as the SR-3HT, can operate from 14°F to 131°F, representing a broader temperature range than previous models in the company's portfolio. According to the company, its previous temperature range reached 32°F to 104°F. The company also announced a partnership with downstream and midstream energy giant Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) last month. Continue reading.

Bot Auto: Houston autonomous trucking co. completes first test run without human intervention

Bot Auto completed its first test run without human assistance in Houston. Photo courtesy Bot Auto.

Houston-based Bot Auto, an autonomous trucking company, completed its first test run without human assistance earlier this year. Bot Auto conducted the test in Houston. The transportation-as-a-service startup added that this milestone “serves as a validation benchmark, demonstrating the maturity and safety of Bot Auto’s autonomy stack and test protocols.” This summer, founder Xiaodi Hou told the Front Lines podcast that Bot Auto had raised more than $45 million. Continue reading.

Nomad: Screen-free hiking app developed in Houston earns 'Best of the Best' award

NOMAD aims to help hikers stay in the moment while still utilizing technology. Photo courtesy UH.

An AI-powered, screen-free hiking system developed by Varshini Chouthri, a recent industrial design graduate from the University of Houston, received this year's Red Dot’s “Best of the Best” award, which recognizes the top innovative designs around the world. Known as NOMAD, the system aims to help users stay in the moment while still utilizing technology. Continue reading.

Little Place Labs, Helix Earth, Tempest Droneworx: Houston startups win big at SXSW 2025 pitch competition

Two Houston startups won the SXSW Pitch showcase in their respective categories. Photo via Getty Images

Houston had a strong showing at the SXSW Pitch showcase in Austin this year, with several local startups claiming top prizes in their respective categories.

Little Place Labs, a Houston space data startup, won the Security, GovTech & Space competition. Clean-tech company Helix Earth, which spun out of Rice University and was incubated at Greentown Labs, won in the Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability contest. Tempest Droneworx, a Houston-based company that provides real-time intelligence collected through drones, robots and sensors, won the Best Speed Pitch award. Continue reading.

6 Houstonians named to prestigious national group of inventors

top honor

Six Houston scientists and innovation leaders have been named to the National Academy of Inventors’ newest class of fellows. The award is the highest professional distinction awarded to academic inventors by the NAI.

The 2025 class is made up of 169 fellows who hold more than 5,300 U.S. patents, according to the organization. The group hails from 127 institutions across 40 U.S. states.

The Houston-based inventors are leading fields from AI to chemistry to cancer research.

“NAI Fellows are a driving force within the innovation ecosystem, and their contributions across scientific disciplines are shaping the future of our world,” Paul R. Sanberg, president of the National Academy of Inventors, said in a news release. “We are thrilled to welcome this year’s class of Fellows to the Academy. They are truly an impressive cohort, and we look forward to honoring them at our 15th Annual Conference in Los Angeles next year.”

The 2025 list of Houston-based fellows includes:

  • Vineet Gupta, Vice President for Innovation, Technology Development and Transfer at the University of Texas Medical Branch
  • Eva Harth, chemistry professor at the University of Houston
  • Dr. Raghu Kalluri, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • Sanjoy Paul, Executive Director of Rice Nexus and AI Houston and Associate Vice President for Technology Development at Rice University
  • Dr. Jochen Reiser, President of the University of Texas Medical Branch and CEO of UTMB Health System
  • Todd Rosengart, Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine

"It is a great honor to be named a Fellow of the NAI. It is deeply gratifying to know that the work my students and I do — the daily push, often in small steps — is seen and recognized," Harth added in a news release from UH.

The 2025 fellows will be honored and presented with their medals by a senior official of the United States Patent and Trademark Office at the NAI Annual Conference this summer in Los Angeles.

Money talks: Top Houston innovation grant and gift news of 2025

Year in Review

Editor's note: As 2025 comes to a close, we're looking back at the stories that defined Houston innovation in 2025. Below, we recap the biggest Houston innovation grant funding and gift news of the year:

Houston scores $120M in new cancer research and prevention grants

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has doled out 73 more grants to health care systems and companies in the state. Carter Smith/Courtesy of MD Anderson

In November 2025, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas granted more than $120 million to Houston organizations and companies as part of 73 awards issued statewide. The funds were part of nearly $154 million approved by the CPRIT's governing board earlier that month, bringing the organization's total investment in cancer prevention and research to more than $4 billion since its inception.

TMC lands $3M grant to launch cancer device accelerator

Recent funding from CPRIT will help launch the new Accelerator for Cancer Medical Devices. Photo via TMC

In September 2025, a new business accelerator at Houston’s Texas Medical Center received a nearly $3 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The CPRIT grant, awarded to the Texas Medical Center Foundation, will help launch the Accelerator for Cancer Medical Devices. The accelerator will support emerging innovators in developing prototypes for cancer-related medical devices and advancing them from prototype to clinical trials.

Houston foundation grants $27M to support Texas chemistry research

Houston's Welch Foundation has awarded more than 80 grants to support chemical research and careers in Texas for 2025. Photo via Getty Images

Houston-based The Welch Foundation doled out $27 million in its June 2025 round of grants for chemical research, equipment and postdoctoral fellowships. $25.5 million was allocated for the foundation's longstanding research grants, which provide $100,000 per year in funding for three years to full-time, regular tenure or tenure-track faculty members in Texas. The foundation made 85 grants to faculty at 16 Texas institutions for 2025.

Houston Methodist receives $25M gift, renames department of medicine

Houston Methodist will rename its department of medicine the Houston Methodist Charles W. Duncan Jr. Department of Medicine. Photo courtesy Houston Methodist.

In August 2025, Houston-based nonprofit The Duncan Fund awarded a $25 million gift to Houston Methodist's department of medicine to establish new endowed fellowships, streamline complex care and bring artificial intelligence into the fold to develop more personalized treatment plans. In turn, the health care system announced that it would rename the department the Houston Methodist Charles W. Duncan Jr. Department of Medicine.

Houston foundation doles out $700K for Texas chemical research

The Welch Foundation has awarded funding through two of its newest grant programs. Photo via Getty Images.

Houston-based The Welch Foundation issued $700,000 in additional funding in August 2025 to support chemical research through two of its newest grant programs. The foundation named the recipients of its Welch eXperimental (WelchX) Collaboration Retreat and Pilot Grants and the Welch Postdoctoral Fellows of the Life Sciences Research Foundation Grants. The WelchX grants were awarded to teams of two Texas researchers who presented "innovative and collaborative ideas" addressing challenges in the clean energy space, according to the foundation.

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

CPRIT recently granted $93 million to 61 organizations and scientists, including many in Houston, to advance cancer research. Carter Smith/Courtesy of MD Anderson

In June 2025, it was announced that several prominent cancer researchers would be coming to the Houston area thanks to $22 million in grants 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, joined the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to continue his research.

Baylor, Rice win $500,000 to launch humanities-driven health AI center

A new center being developed by Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University aims to develop ethically responsible and trustworthy AI for health care. Photo via Getty Images.

In August 2025, Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University announced they had been awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to create the Center for Humanities-based Health AI Innovation (CHHAIN).

Baylor center receives $10M NIH grant to continue rare disease research

BCM's Center for Precision Medicine Models has received funding that will allow it to study more complex diseases. Photo via Getty Images

Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Precision Medicine Models received a $10 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health in November 2025, which will allow it to continue its work studying rare genetic diseases. The Center for Precision Medicine Models creates customized cell, fly and mouse models that mimic specific genetic variations found in patients, helping scientists to better understand how genetic changes cause disease and explore potential treatments.

Houston billionaire benefactors will donate almost entire fortune to charity

Pictured: Nancy and Richard Kinder. Photo by Michelle Watson/Catchlight Group

Houston billionaires Rich and Nancy Kinder announced plans to donate an astounding 95% of their multi-billion-dollar wealth to charities. The news came as the Kinder Foundation announced an $18.5 million expansion project for Emancipation Park in the heart of Third Ward. That historic park was founded by slaves in 1872.

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