Houston regenerative medicine company opens new lab at UH

cell therapy innovation

FibroBiologics is opening a unique new lab at the University of Houston's Technology Bridge. Photo by Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Pete O’Heeron wants you to know that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was originally released as a B-side. What does this nugget about Queen have to do with regenerative medicine? For O’Heeron and his company, FibroBiologics, it means everything.

That’s because most scientists consider stem cells the A-side when it comes to the race to curing disease. But FibroBiologics has set its sights on fibroblasts. The most common cell in the body, fibroblasts are the main cell type in connective tissue.

“Everyone was betting on stem cells, and we started betting on fibroblasts,” says O’Heeron, who started the company in 2008 as SpinalCyte. “I think what we're going to see is that fibroblasts are going to end up winning, there are more robust, more that are lower cost cell, they have higher therapeutic values, higher immune modulation. They're just a better overall cell than the than the stem cells.”

Since a neurosurgeon and a dermatologist first introduced O’Heeron to the idea of using fibroblasts to regrow discs in the spine, the company has expanded its reach to include promising treatments for multiple sclerosis and cancer and in wound care. Imagine a world where doctors lay fibroblasts directly onto surgical incisions after surgery, cutting the time for healing in half.

FibroBiologics has organically written and filed more than 320 patents.

“It's quite a unique situation. I don’t think that in other areas of science that you have such a wide open area to go out and patent. It's just it was a brand new area nobody had been working on,” O’Heeron explains.

And soon, investors will be able to own a stake in the impressive work being forged in Houston. FibroBiologics, previously FibroGenesis, was formed in order to go public in a direct NASDAQ listing. The goal is to access the capital necessary to go to human trials. Earlier this year, the company also launched a crowdfunding campaign.

“We’ve had really fantastic results with animals and now we’re ready for humans,” says O’Heeron. “We've done small human trials, but we haven't done the large ones that are going to get the commercialization approval from the FDA.”

With that in mind, the company just signed a deal with University of Houston’s Innovation Center. On Thursday, September 7, FibroBiologics will dedicate the Newlin-Linscomb Lab for Cell Therapies in the UH Technology Bridge. The new lab is named for former player and color commentator for the Houston Rockets, Mike Newlin and his wife, Cindy, as well as Pam and Dan Linscomb, a founding partner of Kuhl-Linscomb, one of the largest wealth management companies in Houston.

Other big local names newly attached to the company are astronaut Kate Rubins and Elizabeth Shpall, the director of the cell therapy laboratory at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Both have joined FibroBiologics as members of its scientific advisory board.

To fill the lab, O’Heeron says that he is adding to his team as quickly as he is able. The barrier is the fact that there are few, if any people in the world with the exact qualifications he’s seeking.

“Anytime you're breaking new scientific ground, you can't really just go out and recruit someone with that background because it really doesn't exist,” he says. But he is willing to teach and challenge scientists who are the right fit, and is hoping to expand the team in the new lab.

But like Queen did in 1975, FibroBiologics is pioneering a category of its own. And that’s something worth betting on.

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Coya Therapeutics rang the closing bell at Nasdaq last week, celebrating six months since its IPO, new data from trials, and additions to its team. Photo via LinkedIn

Houston company with revolutionary neurodegenerative disease treatment shares milestones since IPO

ring that bell

After announcing its initial public offering earlier this year, a Houston therapeutics company has celebrated the milestone and announced recent growth as well.

Coya Therapeutics (Nasdaq: COYA) rang the closing bell last week. The clinical-stage biotech company, which has developed a biologics therapy that prevents further spreading of neurodegenerative diseases by making regulatory T cells functional again, announced the closing of its $15.25 million IPO in January.

"We launched our IPO into one of the toughest biotech capital markets in recent memory and are enormously grateful to all our investors for the confidence they then showed in our prospects," says Howard Berman, CEO and chairman of Coya, in a June 12 letter to stockholders. "I believe that to date, we’ve executed strongly against the goals we then established, and I remain excited about our future."

In the letter, Berman shares some of the recent clinical successes from two treatments — COYA 302, a treatment for ALS, and COYA 301, a treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease. Both treatments have seen strong clinical proof of concept data in the respective open-label studies.

Earlier this year, Coya expanded its C-suite to include Dr. Arun Swaminathan as chief business officer. He has over 20 years of hands-on health care business executive experience. Prior to Coya, Swaminathan served in the same role for Actinium Pharmaceuticals.

"Arun is actively engaged in exploring potential strategic opportunities across our portfolio of assets as we believe successful partnering efforts have the potential to enhance our scientific bona fides, leverage our technology into new areas of unmet medical need, and importantly, possibly secure upfront fees and associated non-dilutive funding," Berman writes in the letter. "We look forward to pursuing additional value creation catalysts that further highlight our entrepreneurialism and ability to execute, while maintaining focus on our core assets."

The latest addition to the Coya team is Guillaume Dorothée, who joins the company's scientific advisory board. A leading expert on the role that the immune system and peripheral-central immune crosstalk play in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's, he's a tenured research director and team head in neuroimmunology at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris.

“I am glad and honored to join such eminent scientists on the prestigious SAB of Coya Therapeutics," he says in a June 5 statement from Coya. "I am fully convinced that innovative Treg-based immunomodulatory approaches, as developed by Coya, are highly promising therapeutic strategies for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders and other neuroinflammatory conditions. I will be happy to help Coya Therapeutics in this exciting endeavor.”

Recently, Berman joined the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss Coya's mission and plan post IPO.


Houston-based Nauticus Robotics founder, Nicolaus Radford, shares the latest from his company and why we're primed for a hardtech movement. Image via LinkedIn

Houston innovator shares difficult journey to IPO, the challenges of hardtech innovation, and more

Q&A

It's been a busy past year or so for Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus Robotics. He's taken his company public at a difficult time for the market, launched new partnerships with the United States Marine Corps, and even welcomed a new family member.

Originally founded in 2014 as Houston Mechatronics, Nauticus Robotics has designed a fleet of underwater robots and a software platform for autonomous operations. Radford caught up with InnovationMap about these recent milestones for him and the company in an interview.

InnovationMap: Tell me about life after IPO. What’s been surprising for you leading your company through the transition and now on the other side of IPO?

Nicolaus Radford: I'll tell you what, it’s the hardest thing I ever did in my professional career by a factor of 10. Everybody finds their red line once or twice in their career. You know, when you're working 100 hours a week, you're going to bed at 2 am, you're waking up at 6:30 am, you're sleeping three hours a night, right? Everybody's found that moment once in a while and you're like, “okay, I've touched my red line and I would never want to do that again.” This was I knew where my red line was, and I went so far beyond it, I couldn't even see where I thought my red line was. It was a very exceptionally challenging period of time. It took a long to complete the transaction, and the market was just changing under our feet. Rules were and regulations were changing — were we grandfathered in or were we not?

I'm part of some business organizations and, and some of those confidential relationships have turned into friendships. And a couple of them call me and they're like, “we're really worried. We think this is going to be we don't know if you're going to get it done. And we just want you to be aware that you're not you may not get it done.” It is a little scary because once you engage in it, you're running quite a tab with bankers and law firms and all sorts of things. And if you don't complete the deal, it just might kill the company. But we did it. We were one of a few people last year to actually get a deal over the line. I'm very proud of that. I think it speaks to the quality of the deal that we had. The macro economic environment was exceptionally difficult. It remains to be very difficult today. But we had strong backing from our strategic investors and our partners that were already on the cap table. They put a tremendous amount of money into the deal.

You know, I look back on it and it's, you know, ringing the Nasdaq bell when we listed, and giving that speech at the podium — it was a surreal moment. I remember when I was standing there looking at the Nauticus logo on the seven-story Nasdaq tower, having as many people in the company as we could bring, and just sharing that moment with all of them, especially my wife, who, I will be very clear about this, I could not have gotten through this moment without her. She is the rock that keeps our family together and my head straight. A little known fact — we had a newborn during this time as well, so that was also very difficult. And and she just handled so much that there's just not another person like her.

I was excited but cautious at the same time. I mean, the life of a CEO of a public company at large, it's all about the process following a process, the regulations, the administration of the public company, the filings, the reportings — it can feel daunting. I have to rise to the occasion to tackle that in this the next stage of the company.

IM: You’re working with the military on a project that adapts Nauticus’s tech for Marine Corps use. What’s it been like working with the military on this project?

NR: We've probably worked with military interests for the last six years, but all of the things that we have been doing have been extremely confidential and hush. Now we've been able to work with customers that have a stronger public facing persona, and the Defense Innovation Unit is one of those. Their charter is it's quite literally looking for commercial technology and adapting that towards military applications, and so it's been nice to be able to show the utility and the application of of a lot of our technology and what we've been working on for so long as it's applied on a broader scale to the big services, whether it's the Navy or the Marine Corps. Both of the programs we’re working on are all about mine countermeasures, and mines are really, really difficult, especially underwater mines. We've been we've been applying all of Nauticus’s broad technology portfolio to being able to search autonomously and being able to identify and neutralize threats in the water. I love that mission because anytime we can remove our service men and women from these situations, that's just the right thing to do. There are those three universal truths — all babies are cute, all puppies are huggable, and all Canadians are nice. But there's a fourth one — nobody wants to defuse an underwater bomb. And so I'm really happy to be working on robotics technologies where that's the case.

IM: The Ion recently announced Nauticus as a new tenant. What’s the strategy behind creating a footprint there?

NR: We've signed the definitive documents with the Ion about our presence there. We’ve been designing it for a while, and now we're starting to build it out. They're giving us temporary space, so we're going to be immediately there. Nauticus was really born from this connection to spaceflight. We started up Nauticus around NASA, and there's an incredible amount of talent here. And people tend to change jobs sometimes, so we were attracting a lot of talent from NASA. Now that NASA has solidified their mission and what they're doing and gained a little traction, we wanted to have more draw from the universities being up in town. Clear Lake, even though we have water access and it's much closer to Galveston where we test a lot, we wanted to be up in town. So, we're creating a bit of an innovation center. There's a lot more collisions downtown with customers and talent, it just made sense that we had to be there. And because we support the city of Houston so much and what they're doing for the startup community and early stage companies like ourselves that, we want to support that.

IM: How would you describe the state of the hardtech sector?

NR: We still need improvement by far. Hardtech companies are still viewed as a bad investment. We're always going out to investor events, and I remember this one investor came up to me and asked me to tell him a little bit about my company. The second he got into the essence of what we do and sussed out that obviously we are not just a software company, he just goes full stop. “Hey, listen, you know, our investment thesis is we only invest in software companies.” I had just kind of had it and I sort of shot back at him and I just said, “that's a rather that's a rather dumb value proposition and pretty shortsighted.” And we parted ways. It just irritates me that that's this is most of everybody's comeback. Like, they're a special class because they only invest in software companies.

I'm sure you've heard of ChatGPT and how that's going to alter the world forever. Now is probably a really shitty time to be a software developer, and I think it's going to place an extra emphasis and value on hard tech companies because I haven't seen ChatGPT run a run a milling machine yet break a piece of metal on a machine or assemble a circuit board. I love that now the position of companies like ours that are in the robotics space where you take this multidisciplinary blend of hardware, software, and electronics toward an application, because I think that is going to start becoming a premium value.

Software companies tend to attract more equity investment because people have this idea that the scaling costs and the startup costs are lower. Anyone with a keyboard can get online, create a website, and have an e-commerce business. Turns out, that because that’s true, there’s a million out there. What I love about a hardtech company that if you get it right, the cost of trying to compete with that company that figured it out is so high that the negative now begins the benefit. A fast follower is almost impossible.

The VC community sprung up in a post World War II world to help fund the commercialization of the computer and silicon — that's kind of what it originated from. I mean, there was not an investment vehicle that companies that were developing technology in this space could go to and get a loan, couldn't go to the bank. The venture capital world developed to help spawn hard tech investments. And, I hate to break it to you, but one of the most valuable companies in the world was a hard tech company: Tesla. This is a physical world. And I believe the last 50 years were absolutely characterized by the ubiquitous manipulation of the virtual world, but the next 50 years are going to be characterized by the ubiquitous manipulation of the physical world. And that's where we're at.

IM: What’s next for Nauticus?

NR: What’s next is tough to talk about, because I can only talk about what’s already been published. I see Nauticus being the preeminent ocean robotics company. I want Nauticus to be an empire. It starts small but it grows — and it grows in many different ways, and we’re exploring all of those different ways to grow. We’re leading a technology renaissance in the marine space — and that happens only a few times in an industry.

------

This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

This month, Mark Walker is celebrating his company's one year anniversary of going public — only the ninth Black-founded business to accomplish this feat on a U.S. stock exchange. Photo courtesy

Houston founder shares how he's using tech to make digital media more effective and equitable

houston innovators podcast episode 173

After working in both sides of the advertising world, Mark Walker thought he could reimagine a platform that would be more efficient and equitable.

Walker co-founded his company, Direct Digital Holdings, an adtech platform, after serving in several roles — from an early hire at Houston digital media startup Questia to business development director at NRG Energy and COO of EBONY Media. He shares on the Houston Innovators Platform how he took this experience in tech, advertising, and media to create his company's platform.

"NRG Energy gave me a top-down view of the value chain, and Ebony gave me a bottoms-up view of the value chain of how media is purchased," Walker says on the show. "At Direct Digital Holdings, we help companies buy and sell media — and we leverage technology to do it. It's really the culmination of both of those experiences."

With over 30,000 publishers on its platform, Direct Digital makes it easier for its core customers — middle market companies looking to buy into the digital media ecosystem — to tap into these opportunities without the tech know-how they might otherwise need. Walker explains that at EBONY, he saw how small to midsize publications — especially the multicultural ones — were being left out on the ad selling side of the equation. The Direct Digital platform bridges the gap on each end.

Founded in 2018 in partnership with Keith Smith, who went through similar professional experiences, Direct Digital went public exactly one year ago after growing the company through strategic M&A activity. Walker says the decision to IPO made the most sense for his company — though it wasn't an easy process. Direct Digital is only the ninth company founded by a Black entrepreneur to go public on a US stock exchange.

"If you think the process is hard — it actually is," Walker says on the journey to IPO. "We were a privately held company, and we knew we had a good growth trajectory and we looked a couple different options. We decided to go public in a very traditional way."

Walker explains there were some risks involved, but the co-founders ultimately decided to shy away from adding in investors who might not have the same ideas for the company's future.

Direct Digital has been a Houston company from the star — despite the city not being home to a booming adtech ecosystem. Instead, Houston — with its collection of Fortune 500 companies and rich diversity — has allowed the business to stand out.

"If you look at and reflect on how our company has been built — from our board of directors to our leadership and management team — we're a majority minority organization all the way across the board," Walker says. "Diversity is very important to us. It's the lifeblood of our business — especially because we're serving publishers in those communities in big way. And moreso, we think you get the best product, thoughts, and ideas from a diverse workforce, and Houston fits right into that mold for us."

Walker shares more about his company's future, advice on IPO, and what all he's watching in adtech — from AI to streaming — on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


Intuitive Machines will be listed on Nasdaq beginning tomorrow, February 14. Photo via intuitivemachines.com

Houston space tech startup closes deal to IPO

now trading

It's official. This Houston company is live in the public market.

Intuitive Machines, a space tech company based in Southeast Houston, announced that it has completed the transaction to merge with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company traded on Nasdaq.

“We are excited to begin this new chapter as a publicly traded company,” says Steve Altemus, co-founder, president, and CEO of Intuitive Machines, in a news release. “Intuitive Machines is in a leading position to replace footprints with a foothold in the development of lunar space. With our launch into the public sphere through Inflection Point, we have reached new heights financially and opened the doors for even greater exploration and innovation for the progress of humanity.”

The transaction, which was originally announced in September, was approved by Inflection Point’s shareholders in a general meeting on February 8. As a result of the deal, the company will receive around $55 million of committed capital from an affiliate of its sponsor and company founders, the release states.

“Today marks an incredible milestone for Intuitive Machines, and we will continue to support them on their historic voyage as a public company,” says Michael Blitzer, co-CEO of Inflection Point, in the release. “The company is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on growing commercial and governmental interests in space, and it has been a privilege to partner with the Company as it positions itself as a strategic national asset.”

Per the release, Inflection Point has been renamed “Intuitive Machines, Inc.” and trading will begin on February 14. Intuitive Machines’ common stock and warrants planned to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbols “LUNR” and “LUNRW,” respectively.

“Intuitive Machines is playing a critical role in America’s return to the Moon by providing technologies and services to establish long-term lunar infrastructure and commerce,” says Kam Ghaffarian, Ph. D., co-founder and executive chairman of Intuitive Machines, in the release. “This merger accelerates and strengthens Intuitive Machines’ strategic plan to help expedite a thriving commercial ecosystem for space for the benefit of human civilization.”

A Houston biotech startup focused on developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases has closed its IPO. Photo via Getty Images

Houston biotech company closes IPO in $15.25M deal

new ticker

A clinical-stage biotech company based in Houston has announced the closing of its $15.25 million IPO.

Coya Therapeutics, now trading under the ticker COYA, announced this week that its IPO — previously disclosed in December — has closed its initial public offering of 3,050,000 shares of its common stock and accompanying warrants to purchase up to 1,525,000 shares of common stock, per a news release.

The company is developing proprietary therapies to enhance the function of regulatory T cells to target systemic inflammation and neuroinflammation.

According to the company, the net proceeds from the offering — which was estimated to be at around $13.2 million, per a release — will go toward advancing its programs in preclinical studies into clinical trials — as well as to advance its discovery and candidate selection stage programs and other scaling purposes.

In 2021, Coya Therapeutics announced that it had merged with Nicoya Health Inc. and raised $10 million in its series A. The round was led by Florida-based Allele Capital Partners LLC. Howard Berman, founder and board of directors for imaware, was named the CEO of Coya, as well as a member of the company's board of directors, alongside the merger and series A announcement.

Coya's therapeutics uses innovative work from Dr. Stanley H. Appel, co-director of Houston Methodist Neurological Institute and Chair of the Stanley H. Appel Department of Neurology at Houston Methodist Hospital. The researcher has created a way to "isolate dysfunctional Tregs from a patient, convert them to a highly functional and neuroprotective condition, and expand these cells into the billions for intravenous reinfusion back to the patient," says Berman in a 2022 news release. This revolutionary work overcomes previous limitations in the field.

"Patients with neurodegenerative diseases are in desperate need of transformative therapeutic options; harnessing the neuroprotective effects of Treg cell therapy shows great potential in unlocking a new treatment paradigm and may enable us to revolutionize care for patients with devastating neurodegenerative diseases," Appel said last February. "We have successfully demonstrated, in a phase 1 trial, the safety and tolerability of autologous infusions of expanded Tregs in ALS patients, with the potential of slowing or halting disease progression. Ongoing studies provide a transformative framework for advanced clinical trials in ALS and other neurodegenerative disorders."

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Houston startup develops tech to equip businesses with the social media skills they need to thrive

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Just look at any smartphone on the market and it becomes evident just how pervasive mobile apps have become, especially social media apps.

As the social networking sphere has revolutionized communication, technology has spawned multitudinous variants in the most organic way. That kind of technological momentum lends itself to why platforms like Guide App have a chance to be the next big thing in the space.

The company's CEO and co-founder, Tim Salau, tells InnovationMap that Guide is a social learning and development platform that aims to revolutionize learning experiences for creators, leaders, and organizations.

“Guide is a social learning platform for creators who are freelancers and work in the entertainment and media industry,” says Salau, Houston native and University of Texas graduate. “And they can use Guide to create and learn production skills. We pivoted in late 2019 as the pandemic hit, and we realized that Guide could be used as a B2B platform and solution for businesses to onboard and train their remote workers.

“So that's really what makes us money, and we really decided to build it because we saw that there was a huge gap in the business space of a bite-sized training platform and solution, and to do what TikTok and Reels was doing in the consumer space, but for professionals with security and privacy in mind for organizations,” he says.

With the pivot, businesses can now use Guide as a platform to onboard and train new hires for their respective companies.

“Ideally, it would be pretty much anyone within the marketing department, the product management division, or even engineers within their organizations who are creators in the sense of migrating to creative work in their own different disciplines,” says Salau. “And they could use Guide to potentially maybe create a video that's 90 seconds or less on everything a new hire needs to know within the first 90 days in the product management role or in the marketing role.”

Tapping into trends

Salau explains how he's got his ear to the ground when it comes to trends within media.

“With the way that things are moving in the entertainment and media industry and what's been happening with these strikes, I see the short-form content becoming even more important because people are not necessarily attending movie theaters at a high engagement rate,” says Salau. “Then there are multiple streaming platforms have so many gates and paywalls up, a lot of people aren't necessarily using all of these streaming platforms and seeing all of the long-form content out."

“I'm starting to see that in the next three to five years, macro content will become more important, and instead of the streaming era that we've seen in the last few years or in the last decade or so led by Netflix, I'm going to use our mock theory, we're going to start seeing a beaming era in which we're going to start seeing content being pushed to creators and consumers, that is literally tailored to what they want.”

According to Salau, platforms such as Instagram and TikTok push content based on their respective algorithms that followers don’t necessarily want to see, and that takes time away from the content they need, when they need it.

“Looking forward, it’s clear that in the sense of taking away all of the distractions that we see on these platforms, at Guide, we want to push content as it comes from the creators,” says Salau. “And for us, that focus will be on microcontent, which is content that’s 90 seconds or less.”

Data shows that the best micro content is video content that clocks in around 15 seconds.

“Content that goes up to 30 seconds is probably even cutting it a little bit too long, but the content that really goes a lot, and goes really viral on those platforms is 15 seconds,” says Salau. “And now that TikTok is becoming a more long-form entertainment platform, you're starting to see them kind of strip away from what really got them popular and buzzworthy.”

Monitoring monetization

Popularity aside, one of the major tenets of content creation is monetization.

“Getting to the point where creators will be able to monetize their content is our goal at Guide,” says Salau. “We have to build up towards that goal, but that’s the intent. We intend on having them be able to create profiles where they can actually list their merch. They can post about merch in their videos, and more importantly, get to a point where people can actually buy the entertaining content that they have.”

Once Guide reaches monetization, creators will be able to list content at the price they want it and have associated merchandise of their brand. This is a huge difference from how TikTok and Instagram and other consumer video platforms get creators paid.

“We see that it's better to actually go the other route and actually allow creators to monetize their own brand, which is what every creator often really wants,” says Salau. “That’s ideal because when a creator brings consumer brands into the picture, they have to play to what they want from an advertisement and dollars type of standpoint. So, we don't want to actually get into that world. We want to really keep everything creator oriented.”

Curating a culture of creators

At this point, Guide has about 150 creators, because they’ve been very selective with their icon program.

“We don’t believe that everyone’s a creator,” says Salau. “Because if everyone is a creator, then no one is a creator.

“And we kind of see this with a lot of the creator platforms out there. Just because anyone can create content with a smartphone doesn't mean it's content that's edifying or beneficial that people are actually enriching and learning from. So, we're really big on learning, because we see ourselves in that space.”

As Salau and team look forward with Guide, they plan on continuing to address the learning and talent development gap for remote and mobile teams. They’ll also remain focused on being the kind of platform where creators can talk about the behind-the-scenes and the process of how to make music or how to approach acting, or how to think about set production when on a set.

“With Instagram and TikTok, it’s really much more about fun and virality, and doing something that gets a reaction, versus helping people learn,” says Salau. “So, with us, the feedback we've received is, ‘I get it,’ and ‘I'm interested.’ And I want to continue learning and growing with y'all. Thank you.”

Ion grows coworking footprint, Cart.com returns HQ to Houston, and more top stories

trending news

Editor's note:Another week has come and gone, and it's time to round up the top headlines from the past few days. Trending Houston tech and startup articles on InnovationMap included the Ion growing its coworking space, Cart.com moving its headquarters back to Houston, and more.

Houston-founded unicorn logistics company returns HQ to the Bayou City

It's a homecoming for this Texas unicorn. Photo via cart.com

While originally founded in Houston in 2020, Cart.com has called Austin home for the past two years. Now, the scaling software company is coming home.

Cart.com, a tech company providing commerce and logistical solutions for businesses, announced today that its corporate headquarters has returned to Houston amid its rapid growth.

“I couldn’t be happier to bring Cart.com back home to Houston as we continue to revolutionize how merchants sell and fulfill products to meet customers anywhere they are,” Cart.com Founder and CEO Omair Tariq says in a news release. “The idea for Cart.com was born in Houston and we’ve always maintained a strong local presence with the majority of our executive team and board based here. As our customer mix increasingly moves upmarket and our own needs evolve, I’m confident Houston has what we need as we look towards the next stage of Cart.com’s growth story.” Read more.

Growing femtech company chooses Houston for first out-of-state expansion

After growing in Chicago and raising funding, Partum Health selected Houston to expand its femtech platform. Photo via Getty Image

A startup dedicated to comprehensive pregnancy, birth and postpartum care has expanded from its Chicago birthplace to Houston.

Last summer, Partum Health raised $3.1 million in seed funding, which makes it possible for the company to begin a nationwide expansion. That begins in Space City.

“We looked at states where there is work to do on outcomes for maternal health. Texas rose to the top and Houston, in many ways is fairly close to Chicago, our home city. The really thriving healthcare ecosystem attracted us as well,” CEO and Co-Founder Meghan Doyle tells InnovationMap.Read more.

Coworking concept delivers 28,000-square-foot expansion in the Ion

The Ion now officially has more coworking space. Photo via thecommondesk.com

The coworking space in the Ion has increased by 50 percent thanks to a recent expansion project.

Dallas-based Common Desk has officially delivered on its project to expand the coworking space in the Ion that it originally opened on the second floor two years ago. Now, coworkers have access to a total of 86,400 square feet of space, including newly opened space on the fourth floor. The company has agreed to a 10-year commitment to the Ion with the expansion.

“This expansion of Common Desk at The Ion was designed specifically to complement the existing amenities and serve remote and hybrid work styles," Austin Gauley, head of design at Common Desk says in the news release. "There's a variety of video conferencing room types—from multiple individual private rooms, to a large group presentation-style room—all equipped with state-of-the-art technology that is also user-friendly. Read more.

Houston founders named winners for 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year awards

Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt were originally named regional winners in this year's competition this summer along with nine other Houston entrepreneurs. Photos via solugen.com

Houston’s Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt, the founders of the transformative chemical manufacturing company Solugen, have been named EY’s US National Award winners for Entrepreneur of the Year.

Solugen, also recently named a finalist in the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards, is an environmentally friendly approach that relies on smaller chemical refineries that helps in reducing costs and transportation-related emissions. Some of their noted accomplishments includes innovations like the proprietary reactor, dubbed the Bioforge, which is a carbon-negative molecule factory and manufacturing process produces zero wastewater or emissions compared with traditional petrochemical refineries.The Bioforge uses a chemienzymatic process in converting plant-sourced substances into essential materials that can be used instead of fossil fuels. Read more.

4 Houston life science startups secure over $40M in CPRIT funding

Four Houston startups have received over $40 million in funding from a Texas organization. Photo via Getty Images

Four Houston bioscience startups have collected nearly $43 million in grants from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).

The four startups, the amount and purpose of each grant, and some background information about each company are rounded up here.

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

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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.

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