Report: Houston is primed for a boom in these life science subsectors

by the numbers

According to a new report, Houston has potential to lead three life science subsectors: cell and gene therapy manufacturing, molecular diagnostics, and biologics drug development and manufacturing. Photo via Getty Images

A new report found that Houston has great potential across a handful of life science subsectors.

The study by Newmark Consulting Group was commissioned by the Greater Houston Partnership and sponsored by San Jacinto College, Lone Star College, Houston Community College, and McCord Development. It looked at the region's existing resources and value proposition in the life sciences sector.

According to the report, Houston is home to industry-leading expertise in three subsectors: cell and gene therapy manufacturing, molecular diagnostics, and biologics drug development and manufacturing.

From a workforce perspective, the city has a steady flow of new talent from regional universities and "an emerging and robust commitment by community colleges to support two-year degree pathways to meet industry demands and the ability for life science companies to grow and thrive in the market," per the report. The findings led to identifying the next steps for the Houston region to capitalize on these advantages.

“The Newmark study confirms what we knew to be true about the potential for life sciences growth in Houston,” says Susan Davenport, GHP's chief economic development officer, in a news release. “The study will help us coalesce our regional partners around a cohesive strategy to grow and expand the industry in Houston.”

The report's other key findings included:

  • Houston consistently ranks as a top-15 market for life sciences employment nationwide and first in Texas with nearly 700 life science companies operating in town.
  • The Bayou City has the densest patient population in the world, which allows for transformational clinical applications.
  • The city's diverse workforce, extensive university ecosystem, education infrastructure, and research institutions sets a scene for Houston to capture extensive subsector gains.
  • Houston ranks second in the nation in clinical trial volume with more than 4,600 currently active clinical trials, which is representing 15 percent of all active U.S. trials.
  • In 2021, Houston-area institutions attracted $864.1 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, which is up 16.3 percent from 2020. On average over the past five years, the region received $740.7 million per year in NIH funding for a total of $3.9 billion.
  • Houston is home to more than 26,000 non-healthcare life science employees.
  • The region's life sciences workforce ranks No. 12 in the nation, on par with numbers reported for Research Triangle Park.
In light of the report, the GHP is recommending a few action items, including "accelerating workforce development programs to produce new graduates in key life sciences occupations, refining Houston’s marketing messages to highlight the region’s existing life science assets and activities within life science R&D and manufacturing," per the report. Additionally, the GHP identified the need to develop a shared regional strategy to attract and retain leading life sciences companies.
To lead these initiatives, the GHP has assembled task forces, which will be led by the organization’s Life Sciences Committee, chaired by Ferran Prat, senior vice president of Industry Relations and Research at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Houston — home to the largest medical center — ranks No. 13 on a list of top life science labor markets. Photo via TMC

Here's how Houston ranks as a life science market, according to a new report

by the numbers

For Houston’s life sciences sector, 13 is a very lucky number.

The Houston metro area ranks 13th in CBRE’s first-ever analysis of the country’s top 25 U.S. labor markets for life sciences. Houston’s collective brain power helped cement its place on the list.

The Boston-Cambridge area tops the ranking. Houston is the highest-ranked Texas market, ahead of No. 16 Dallas-Fort Worth and No. 18 Austin.

Dallas-based CBRE, a provider of commercial real estate services, lauds Houston for its “attractive combination” of affordability and a deep pool of Ph.D.-level talent, as well as the presence of major research universities and medical institutions.

Scott Carter, senior vice president of life sciences and healthcare in CBRE’s Houston office, says those factors make Houston “an attractive market for life sciences industry expansion.”

“Houston is projected to lead the nation in population growth over the next five years, which will only strengthen the appeal of its labor market,” Carter says.

Houston boasts the nation’s highest wages in the life sciences sector compared with the cost of living, the analysis shows. Meanwhile, Ph.D. recipients account for 18.5 percent of the 1,300 biological and biomedical sciences degrees granted each year in the Houston area — the highest concentration nationwide. And Houston produces 4.2 percent of such Ph.D. recipients in the U.S. — more than all but a few major life sciences markets do.

“Millions of square feet and billions of dollars of life sciences development is underway or planned in Houston to break down longtime silos between commercial, academic, and medical sectors,” Carter says. “Leveraging the unmatched scale of the Texas Medical Center, these new moon-shot investments are building a launchpad to rocket Space City into a new era as a global hub for scientific and human progress.”

Underscoring the rapid rise of the city’s innovation ecosystem, Houston enjoys one of the country’s fastest-growing pipelines for VC funding in life sciences. Here, VC funding in the sector rose 937 percent in the past five years, compared with the nationwide increase of 345 percent, according to CBRE.

For its analysis, CBRE assessed each market based on several criteria, including its number of life sciences jobs and graduates, its share of the overall job and graduate pool in life sciences, its number of Ph.D. recipients in life sciences, and its concentration of jobs in the broader professional, scientific, and technical services professions.

In 2020, CBRE ranked Houston as the No. 2 emerging hub for life sciences in a report, which factored in size and growth of life-sciences employment, the venture capital and National Institutes of Health funding, and more.

Atul Varadhachary, managing partner of Fannin Innovation Studio, says that now is the time to invest in life sciences. Photo via Getty Images

Innovation studio aims to put Houston on the map for life science startup development

fostering innovation

In a report last year from commercial real estate services company JLL, Boston took the crown for hosting the country's top life sciences ecosystem. Houston ranked 11th.

The difference between Houston and Boston "is not the innovation, it's not the technology, it's not the money. It's that we don't have experienced life sciences entrepreneurs," says Dr. Atul Varadhachary, managing partner of Houston's Fannin Innovation Studio, a for-profit entity that commercializes biotech and medtech concepts.

Fannin has tried to replicate Boston's robust life sciences ecosystem "in a really, really tiny way" via its fellowship program, Varadhachary says. But the reach of the program could be even greater, he believes.

Varadhachary makes a case for tripling or even quadrupling the number of participants in Fannin's federally accredited fellowship program. He says this one relatively small investment could push Houston closer to Boston in the life sciences stratosphere.

Atul Varadhachary is the managing partner of Houston's Fannin Innovation Studio. Photo via fannininnovation.com

To be sure, Houston is no slouch in life sciences. For instance, commercial real estate services company CBRE issued a report last fall ranking Houston second among the country's top emerging clusters for life sciences. But cities like Boston, San Francisco, and San Diego still reign as life sciences royalty in the U.S.

Fannin typically taps five people at a time — folks who've recently earned a master's degree, medical degree or PhD — for a two-year fellowship in life sciences entrepreneurship and commercialization. The initiative is comparable to a post-doctorate program in research or medicine. The Fannin fellows collaborate with therapeutics and medical device companies in the studio's portfolio, gaining hands-on training in facets of business like R&D, intellectual property, regulatory matters, and financing.

Today, five fellows and seven interns work at Fannin. The fellowship program launched in 2006; the internship program started a year earlier. In all, Fannin has welcomed more than 250 fellows and interns. Some of them have gone on to work at Houston organizations such as TMC Innovation, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Houston.

Varadhachary believes boosting the fellowship headcount to perhaps 15 instead of the current five would be a small price to pay to help elevate Houston's status in life sciences. The full cost of each fellowship is less than $100,000 a year, so bringing aboard another 10 fellows would require an extra annual commitment of under $1 million. That kind of money isn't in Fannin's budget, though.

"I can think of nothing that could give a bigger return on investment for the city," Varadhachary says of expanding Fannin's fellowship program.

More fellows would mean more entrepreneurs equipped to run or start life sciences businesses in Houston, he says. Varadhachary acknowledges the value of efforts like the soon-to-open TMC3 life sciences hub and the recently opened Ion entrepreneurship hub, but he'd like to see more emphasis placed on nurturing people and not just startups.

Varadhachary says the "the one single thing" that Houston could do to increase its probability of success in life sciences, particularly in therapeutics, would be to crank up cultivation of entrepreneurial talent.

"By and large, I don't think know that this community appreciates how important and how under-resourced that whole people-development piece is," he says. "It's not something that comes from taking classes or watching. It comes from doing."

Andrea Letkeman, director of professional development at Fannin, says the fellows initially work one-on-one with a senior executive on projects, then eventually graduate to running their own projects. Fellows also get a close-up look at other projects underway at Fannin.

Varadhachary wants to get Fannin fellows excited "about what we're doing in Houston, and then give them an opportunity to be part of our ecosystem."

Some Fannin fellows have been hired on a full-time basis by the studio, or they've moved into jobs at venture capital firms, life sciences startups, or other players in the ecosystem, according to Letkeman. She says the fellows lend "energy and vibrancy" to Fannin.

"I think that the Fannin model is fairly unique for Houston. There are models that are similar, across the country, to what we do. But there's not enough of them, quite frankly, for the number of people that are interested in these kinds of roles," Letkeman says.

"There is talent that is looking for a way to bridge the gap between academia and real-world commercialization," she adds. "There's just not enough opportunities out there for them."

Kevin Coker, CEO of Proxima Clinical Research, say his company transform from uncertainty to almost uncontrollable growth in just 12 months. He shares what happened on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo courtesy of Proxima

Houston health tech company bounces back from COVID-19 in a big way

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 82

The pandemic hit life science innovation hard. And no one knows that better than Kevin Coker, co-founder and CEO of Proxima Clinical Research, a Houston-based contract research organization focused on supporting life science startups as they grow and scale.

"Last year from January to June, it was very tough," Coker says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Hospitals shut down, so any existing projects we had ongoing just halted."

Coker and his team of 12 — including co-founder and chairman, Larry Lawson — at the time didn't have any new projects coming in and were at the mercy of the pandemic.

"Everything was flat. In May, I was starting to worry. I didn't know how long we were going to have to weather the storm," Coker remembers.

Then, in June, things started changing, he says. As hospitals started to reopen and clinical research was reignited. Initially, some COVID diagnostic products were gaining momentum, as well as some emergency use authorization products.

"Things just really started taking off for us," Coker says. "I think it was really a product of investors and people being able to make decisions despite the pandemic."

Coker describes the experience not as a rollercoaster — it was all downhill for Proxima and then business took flight. Last quarter, the company was signing a new contract every two to three days. With the influx of projects, Coker says his team scaled to 50 full time employees and 75 part time team members — most of these new additions Coker hasn't even met yet, since the staff has been working remotely.

"We're a good barometer for what's happening not only locally but across the country," Coker says. "As Proxima has grown, it's really show how the Houston life science market is growing."

Now, Coker is focused on maintaining the company culture at Proxima as well as finding a new, larger office space in the Texas Medical Center — Proxima's current office is in the TMC Innovation Institute.

Coker says it's his intention to keep its operations smaller and more hands on than the usual CRO, which typically has 5,000 to 10,000 employees and multi-billion dollars in revenue, and focused on startups and small companies.

"That type of organization doesn't work well with a small med device or pharmaceutical company. We wanted to create a company that looked and felt like the startups," he says.

Coker shares more about Proxima's growth and Houston's potential of being a major life science hub on the episode. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

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Axiom Space launches semiconductor and astronaut training initiatives

space projects

Axiom Space, a Houston-based commercial spaceflight and space infrastructure company, has launched initiatives in two very different spheres — semiconductors and astronaut training.

On the semiconductor front, Axiom has signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese chemical company Resonac Corp. to collaborate on semiconductor R&D and manufacturing projects carried out in space. Among Resonac’s products are materials used in chip manufacturing.

Axiom said the deal “paves the way toward leveraging microgravity to advance next-generation chip technologies and accelerate the in-space manufacturing market.”

Under the agreement, Axiom and Resonac will explore the potential production of semiconductor materials and chip packaging in microgravity and low-Earth-orbit environments.

“The unique environment of space offers immense potential for advancing semiconductor materials, especially in crystal growth,” Masato Fukushima, Resonac’s chief technology officer, said in a news release.

The deal will also extend Resonac’s work with Axiom on the development of molding compounds that can reduce “soft errors” when semiconductor devices are exposed to space radiation.

“Our collaboration with Resonac underscores how Axiom Space is enabling global corporations from around the world to leverage space to drive manufacturing innovation across critical technology sectors such as semiconductors,” Axiom astronaut Koichi Wakata, the company’s chief technology officer, said.

In the astronaut training arena, Axiom has tapped Portuguese physiologist Emiliano Ventura as its first “Project Astronaut.” Ventura will apply his expertise in human performance to a pilot program aimed at testing six-month astronaut training protocols.

“His goal is to participate in a future mission and explore, with scientific depth and curiosity, how the human body adapts to microgravity, contributing fresh insights to the current body of research in space physiology,” Axiom said.

Ventura has helped several Axiom crewmembers with physiological needs before and after missions aboard the International Space Station.

Axiom said Ventura’s pilot program will study astronauts’ physiological responses to microgravity during spaceflight. The program eventually will benefit Axiom astronauts heading to the world’s first commercial space station, which is being built by Axiom.

Michael López-Alegria, Axiom’s chief astronaut, said he and the company’s two other astronauts will train with Ventura. The Project Astronaut initiative “strengthens our commitment to enabling safe, effective, and inspiring commercial space missions while supporting scientific objectives worldwide.” López-Alegria said.

Houston scientist launches new app to support mental health professionals

App for that

One Houston-based mental health scientist is launching a new app-based approach to continuing education that she hopes will change the way doctors, therapists, and social workers evolve in their field.

The app, MHNTI, is named for its parent company, the Mental Health Network & Training Institute. It's a one-stop shop for mental health professionals to find trainers, expert consultations, local providers, webinars, and other tools related to licensure certification and renewal.

Free and paid tiers offer different levels of access, but both offer doctors, counselors, and more an easier way to engage with continuing education. When a mental health professional is looking to expand their knowledge in a way that coincides with CE requirements, MHNTI provides it; as easy as using Amazon.

"We built MHNTI for the clinicians craving meaningful, ongoing training that fits real-life schedules," said Dr. Elizabeth McIngvale. "MHNTI is more than an app. It's a movement to support mental health professionals at every career stage."

McIngvale, the daughter of celebrated Houston entrepreneur Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale, co-founded MHNTI after becoming one of the leading experts on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the United States. Born with the condition herself, she suffered greatly as a child to the point that she required extensive repetitive rituals daily just to function. She responded to exposure with response prevention (ERP) treatment, earned her Ph.D. from the University of Houston, and is now the director at the OCD Institute of Texas.

This is not the first time she used the internet to try to improve the mental health industry. In 2018, she launched the OCD Challenge website, a free resource for people with OCD.

McIngvale's co-founder is New York-based doctor, entrepreneur, and author Lauren Wadsworth, another expert in OCD and other anxiety disorders. Like McIngvale, she understands that the labyrinthian world of continuing education can keep mental health professionals from achieving their potential.

"Mental health providers are often overworked and under-resourced. MHNTI is here to change that," said Wadsworth. "We're creating a space where clinicians can continuously learn, grow, and feel supported by experts who understand the work firsthand."

MHNTI is available in the App Store, Google Play, and for desktop.

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A version of this article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Announcing the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards finalists

Inspirational Innovators

InnovationMap is proud to reveal the finalists for the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards.

Taking place on November 13 at Greentown Labs, the fifth annual Houston Innovation Awards will honor the best of Houston's innovation ecosystem, including startups, entrepreneurs, mentors, and more.

This year's finalists were determined by our esteemed panel of judges, comprised of past award winners and InnovationMap editorial leadership.

The panel reviewed nominee applications across 10 prestigious categories to determine our finalists. They will select the winner for each category, except for Startup of the Year, which will be chosen by the public via online voting launching later this month.

We'll announce our 2025 Trailblazer Award recipient in the coming weeks, and then we'll unveil the rest of this year's winners live at our awards ceremony.

Get to know all of our finalists in more detail through editorial spotlights leading up to the big event. Then, join us on November 13 as we unveil the winners and celebrate all things Houston innovation. Tickets are on sale now — secure yours today.

Without further ado, here are the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards finalists:

Minority-founded Business

Honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by BIPOC or LGBTQ+ representation:

  • Capwell Services
  • Deep Anchor Solutions
  • Mars Materials
  • Torres Orbital Mining (TOM)
  • Wellysis USA

Female-founded Business

Honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by a woman:

  • Anning Corporation
  • Bairitone Health
  • Brain Haven
  • FlowCare
  • March Biosciences
  • TrialClinIQ

Energy Transition Business

Honoring an innovative startup providing a solution within renewables, climatetech, clean energy, alternative materials, circular economy and beyond:

  • Anning Corporation
  • Capwell Services
  • Deep Anchor Solutions
  • Eclipse Energy
  • Loop Bioproducts
  • Mars Materials
  • Solidec

Health Tech Business

Honoring an innovative startup within the health and medical technology sectors:

  • Bairitone Health
  • Corveus Medical
  • FibroBiologics
  • Koda Health
  • NanoEar
  • Wellysis USA

Deep Tech Business

Honoring an innovative startup providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges, including those in the AI, robotics and space sectors:

  • ARIX Technologies
  • Little Place Labs
  • Newfound Materials
  • Paladin Drones
  • Persona AI
  • Tempest Droneworx

Startup of the Year (People's Choice)

Honoring a startup celebrating a recent milestone or success. The winner will be selected by the community via an online voting experience:

  • Eclipse Energy
  • FlowCare
  • MyoStep
  • Persona AI
  • Rheom Materials
  • Solidec

Scaleup of the Year

Honoring an innovative later-stage startup that's recently reached a significant milestone in company growth:

  • Coya Therapeutics
  • Fervo Energy
  • Koda Health
  • Mati Carbon
  • Molecule
  • Utility Global

Incubator/Accelerator of the Year

Honoring a local incubator or accelerator that is championing and fueling the growth of Houston startups:

  • Activate
  • Energy Tech Nexus
  • Greentown Labs
  • Healthtech Accelerator (TMCi)
  • Impact Hub Houston

Mentor of the Year

Honoring an individual who dedicates their time and expertise to guide and support budding entrepreneurs. Presented by Houston Community College:

  • Anil Shetty, Inform AI
  • Jason Ethier, EnergyTech Nexus
  • Jeremy Pitts, Activate
  • Joe Alapat, Liongard
  • Neal Dikeman, Energy Transition Ventures
  • Nisha Desai, Intention

Trailblazer Recipient

  • To be announced
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Interested in sponsoring the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards? Contact sales@innovationmap.com for details.

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