Houston biomanufacturing accelerator adds pilot plant to support scale-ups

new digs

BioWell will now operate Texas BioTechnology’s 33,000-square-foot pilot plant. Photo courtesy First Bight Ventures.

Houston accelerator BioWell announced this month that it has taken over operations of Texas BioTechnology’s pilot plant in Richmond, Texas.

The 33,000-square-foot facility is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S. and features molecular biology labs, advanced automation, fermentation equipment and 16 dedicated benches for early-stage industrial biomanufacturing companies, according to a release from the company. It will allow BioWell to offer on-site education, workforce development, and lab training for students and workers.

BioWell and its founding company, First Bight Ventures, report that the facility should help address the industry's "scale-up bottleneck due to limited pilot- and demonstration-scale infrastructure" in the U.S.

"As a Houston-based accelerator dedicated exclusively to early-stage biomanufacturing startups, partnering with this facility was a natural and highly strategic decision for us. The site is fully operational and offers a strong platform to support biomanufacturing companies, industry leaders, and research institutions, providing critical expertise and infrastructure across a broad range of biotechnology production processes,” Veronica Breckenridge, founder of First Bight Ventures and BioWell, said in a news release.

First Bight Ventures shares that the partnership with the facility will also allow it to better support its portfolio companies and make them more attractive to future investors.

BioWell will host an open house and tours of the fermentation and lab spaces and an overview of current bioindustrial projects Wednesday, May 28, at 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. RSVPs are required.

BioWell was originally funded by a $700,000 U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Build to Scale grant and launched as a virtual accelerator for bioindustrial startups. Listen to an interview with Carlos Estrada, head of venture acceleration at BioWell, here.

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Houston research team lands $1.2M grant for ovarian cancer research

cancer funding

A team from the University of Houston and MD Anderson Cancer Center is working to find early markers for ovarian cancer.

Backed by a $1.2 million Department of Defense grant, a team led by Tianfu Wu, associate professor of biomedical engineering at UH, is studying autoantibodies that target a tumor suppressor gene that's often mutated in cancers and serves as an early marker of ovarian cancer development.

According to UH, the majority of women with ovarian cancer (70 percent and 75 percent) are diagnosed once the cancer has already spread, with the chances of survival below 32 percent. Computational models estimate that detecting ovarian cancer earlier could reduce mortality by 10 percent to 30 percent.

Doctors generally screen for ovarian cancer by measuring the rising amount of a protein known as Cancer Antigen 125 (CA125). However, additional biomarkers are needed to improve sensitivity and to detect cancer cases that are missed by CA125 testing.

“Advancing early detection methodologies is essential to improving patient prognosis and survival outcomes,” Wu said in a news release. “The technological challenges in the early detection of ovarian cancer are multifaceted, primarily due to limited sensitivity of currently available biomarkers and the absence of highly accurate biomarkers that can detect the disease well before clinical diagnosis.”

Wu’s team developed a test that detects thousands of immune reactions simultaneously by searching for immune complexes in an effort to identify new autoantibodies. They found more than 100 significantly upregulated immune complexes in ovarian cancer patients compared to healthy patients.

The team will test 10 to 20 of the biomarker candidates to assess their performance in the early detection of ovarian cancer. They will use machine learning modeling to develop computer algorithms for data analysis and disease predictions as well.

Dr. Robert C. Bast at MD Anderson Cancer Center has pioneered the practice of early detection of ovarian cancer, and is Wu’s partner on a team. Ying Lin, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at UH, and Dr. Zhen Lu from at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center are also working on the project.

UH researchers make breakthrough in cutting carbon capture costs

carbon breakthrough

A team of researchers at the University of Houston has made two breakthroughs in addressing climate change and potentially reducing the cost of capturing harmful emissions from power plants.

Led by Professor Mim Rahimi at UH’s Cullen College of Engineering, the team released two significant publications that made significant strides relating to carbon capture processes. The first, published in Nature Communications, introduced a membraneless electrochemical process that cuts energy requirements and costs for amine-based carbon dioxide capture during the acid gas sweetening process. Another, featured on the cover of ES&T Engineering, demonstrated a vanadium redox flow system capable of both capturing carbon and storing renewable energy.

“These publications reflect our group’s commitment to fundamental electrochemical innovation and real-world applicability,” Rahimi said in a news release. “From membraneless systems to scalable flow systems, we’re charting pathways to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors and support the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

According to the researchers, the “A Membraneless Electrochemically Mediated Amine Regeneration for Carbon Capture” research paper marked the beginning of the team’s first focus. The research examined the replacement of costly ion-exchange membranes with gas diffusion electrodes. They found that the membranes were the most expensive part of the system, and they were also a major cause of performance issues and high maintenance costs.

The researchers achieved more than 90 percent CO2 removal (nearly 50 percent more than traditional approaches) by engineering the gas diffusion electrodes. According to PhD student and co-author of the paper Ahmad Hassan, the capture costs approximately $70 per metric ton of CO2, which is competitive with other innovative scrubbing techniques.

“By removing the membrane and the associated hardware, we’ve streamlined the EMAR workflow and dramatically cut energy use,” Hassan said in the news release. “This opens the door to retrofitting existing industrial exhaust systems with a compact, low-cost carbon capture module.”

The second breakthrough, published by PhD student Mohsen Afshari, displayed a reversible flow battery architecture that absorbs CO2 during charging and releases it upon discharge. The results suggested that the technology could potentially provide carbon removal and grid balancing when used with intermittent renewables, such as solar or wind power.

“Integrating carbon capture directly into a redox flow battery lets us tackle two challenges in one device,” Afshari said in the release. “Our front-cover feature highlights its potential to smooth out renewable generation while sequestering CO2.”

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston cancer diagnostics company enters new phase with patient testing

fighting cancer

A Houston-based company is beginning a push on its proven test for central nervous system (CNS) cancers.

“We're going to start rolling out just in Texas and doing patient testing in the state of Texas, first with a few accounts where we've established a relationship, and then we'll continue our rollout through the United States in the next year or so,” says Russell Bradley, president and general manager of CNSide Diagnostics.

Bradley had retired from multinational diagnostics company Abbott Laboratories when he met Marc Hendrick, the CEO of Austin’s Plus Therapeutics, last year. When Hendrick told him about the recent acquisition of CNSide, a company formerly based in San Diego, Bradley says he felt compelled to join in its mission.

CNSide’s CSF assay tests cerebrospinal fluid for cancers that have metastasized to the spine or brain, primarily carcinomas and melanomas.

“Typically, they do an MRI, and that won't always show anything. If it's early stage, they do cytology, which is not very sensitive at finding cancer cells in the cerebrospinal fluid. By the time they're diagnosed, it can be very late-stage, and oftentimes, in fact, the studies show that half of these patients don't get treated,” Bradley says.

CNSide, then, is a ray of hope for patients who are often consigned to palliative care. By diagnosing their metastasis sooner, physicians have more treatment options to stop the CNS cancer before it’s wreaked havoc. Bradley also points out that once a treatment regimen is underway, doctors can continue to measure the cancer’s progress or lack thereof. He claims that, of the roughly 300 neuro-oncologists in the United States, about 200 have already used the test.

Moving from California to Houston briefly slowed progress for CNSide, but now, matters are moving ahead at a steady clip.

“It takes a little bit of time to establish the test in a new location, move the apparatus and establish the processes,” Bradley says. “You have to get the lab accredited, which we just did. So we're now accredited to run patient samples, and we've really just been doing our research samples as part of the clinical studies.”

Texas institutions, such as the University of Texas - Southwestern, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Mays Cancer Center, Baylor Scott & White Health and Texas Oncology, are beginning to use the technology.

Bradley, who lives in Austin but spends much of his time in Houston, says that the city has been nothing less than an ideal fit for the needs of his growing company and a lab that’s currently hiring. He praises the logistics potential of being close to a major hub, which will eventually be a key factor for getting lumbar puncture samples from around the country to the lab for quick testing.

“I think the business environment in Texas, generally, and in Houston, specifically, for us and the access to talent with a lot of institutions here around the Houston area that graduate the type of people that we want to employ is remarkable. And I'd say the cherry on top is really just access to world-class institutions like MD Anderson. I think from a holistic and comprehensive point of view, Houston has a lot to offer a company like us,” Bradley says.

And ultimately, what brought Bradley and CNSide to Texas is the quest to prolong the lives of people living with cancer. As he puts it, “It's a true privilege—and I know I speak on behalf of the team at CNSide and Plus—to be able to impact these patients and have the tools at this time in the history of cancer diagnostics to be able to really make a difference.”

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