With its fourth location recently opened, Texas winery Messina Hof has also launched an innovative augmented reality experience. Photo courtesy of Messina Hof

The Lone Star State is home to a vibrant and innovative wine scene, but, just like most hospitality businesses, winemakers missed the opportunity to engage with their patrons amid the pandemic. With a new idea of how to engage its customers, Messina Hof, an award-winning Texas winery, rolled out a new tech-optimized, at-home experience.

The winery partnered with VISION, a Houston-based production group, to create an augmented reality app. Combining the efforts of Messina Hof's in-house label design team and the animation capabilities of VISION, the app took four months to design.

"It was a labor of love for both parties to be able to experiment with this; it was uncharted territory," says Karen Bonarrigo, owner and chief administrative officer of Messina Hof.

The three wines released — Emblaze (Sweet Red), Vitality (Dry White), and Abounding (Dry Red) — each tells a story through the AR experience.

"We wanted to try not only and push the technology as far as we can push it, but also try to really incorporate some heavy storytelling," says Dan Pratt, VISION Creative Director.

The idea to incorporate technology felt like a natural one to Bonariggo.

"The earth, water, and sunshine all go into developing what the profile is for each wine," explains Bonarrigo.

Each of the three wines have scannable labels that bring up a VR experience for app users. Photo courtesy of Messina Hof

VISION, who worked alongside Messina Hof to develop the project, blended the winery's rich family ties with the Old World history of winemaking.

When customers download the app and hold their camera over the label, a trailing vine emerges onto the screen and wraps around the bottle. As vines grow around each bottle, the three each visually signify a different natural element of winemaking — earth, water and the sun. As a rustic sign emerges, it prompts users to then click for recipe pairing recommendations.

Rather than a single-use experience, Messina Hof and VISION wanted to create an app that users could both engage with and learn from. The AR app allows users to view recipes and browse wines in one place.

"We knew we wanted the app to be functional for people to be able to interact with both when they're doing the AR experience, but then also to be able to continue to come back to it later," shares Bonarrigo. While AR wine labels have emerged in some California vineyards, she says, "it's definitely uncharted territory for the Texas industry."

Overseeing the food and wine pairing at Messina Hof is one of Bonarrigo's passions, so it was a natural choice to include recipes in the app. Messina Hof offers a concept called Vineyard Cuisine, coined from the Bonarrigo family cookbook, and incorporates wine in every meal at the vineyard.

"The idea of tying [the wine] to a recipe gave us the opportunity to be able to share new ways [our customers] could use wines in their everyday cooking," she explains.

She hopes the app's recipe feature will help families connect together.

"So often we get used to sitting down at the table, eating really quickly, and then moving on to the next thing, but there's so much connection that can happen with each other when we can slow down a little bit and have a conversation," she continues.

To Pratt, AR was the perfect way to emphasize and expand on the shared experience of wine.

"We wanted this to be an extension of that experience for people. You know, based on the love of wine and laughter with friends," he says.

For those who can't currently gather in a room together, Bonarrigo has hopes that Messina Hof can bring people together from afar.

"I think now more than ever the ability for our regular customers, even within Texas, to then share those wines with family members or friends that are outside the state seems more intuitive," she explains.

"We are so used to being creatures of habit in sharing our wine face-to-face with people that when we had the unexpected opportunity to not do that, we realized that we still have ways to be able to connect with customers through technology," says Bonarrigo.

She finds the "ease of access of being able to connect with them through the online web store" has kept Messina Hof in touch with customers throughout the pandemic, as well as digital happy hours and tasting events.

Messina Hof Harvest Green Winery & Kitchen, the newest location, opened in February, becoming the Greater Houston-area's largest winery. The space features an expansive tasting room and 83-foot wine bar, full-service restaurant, covered patio, two private tasting rooms, a wine production, barrel room, and wine warehouse.

"We knew that when we launched that location that we wanted to be able to have a series of wines at that location that was special, but also out of the box," says Bonarrigo.

Bonarrigo and her husband Paul have ushered in the expansion of Messina Hof over the last nine years. The family business began in 1977 when Paul's parents, Paul Vincent and Merrill, started an experimental vineyard. Messina Hof has locations in Bryan, Grapevine, Fredericksburg, and Richmond.

"This is our largest winery expansion endeavor that we've done," she says. "We wanted the wines to be extra special."

Similar to Messina Hof, companies across industries are seeking to explore interactive technologies to reach their customer base. "A number of our clients, and also new clients that we may not have been able to reach before, have certainly reached out to us to figure out new ways to reach an audience," shares Pratt.

Winemaking may be an Old World skill, but Messina Hof is excited to bring Texas wine into the future.

"So much of winemaking is science, and so much of it is art. There's always this push and pull as to which is more of a majority in the end product," explains Bonarrigo, who notes that Messina Hof has been using technology to innovate and optimize the growing process. The new AR app is a push toward bringing the experience her family loves into the homes of customers.

"This definitely gives a new talking point to wine," she says.

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Rice researchers score $45M from NIH for cancer-fighting tech

freshly funded

A research funding agency has deployed capital into a team at Rice University that's working to develop a technology that could cut cancer-related deaths in half.

Rice researchers received $45 million from the National Institutes of Health's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, to scale up development of a sense-and-respond implant technology. Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh leads the team developing the technology as principal investigator.

“Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we’ll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time,” he says in a news release. “This kind of ‘closed-loop therapy’ has been used for managing diabetes, where you have a glucose monitor that continuously talks to an insulin pump. But for cancer immunotherapy, it’s revolutionary.”

Joining Veiseh on the 19-person research project named THOR, which stands for “targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation,” is Amir Jazaeri, co-PI and professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The device they are developing is called HAMMR, or hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator.

“Cancer cells are continually evolving and adapting to therapy. However, currently available diagnostic tools, including radiologic tests, blood assays and biopsies, provide very infrequent and limited snapshots of this dynamic process," Jazaeri adds. "As a result, today’s therapies treat cancer as if it were a static disease. We believe THOR could transform the status quo by providing real-time data from the tumor environment that can in turn guide more effective and tumor-informed novel therapies.”

With a national team of engineers, physicians, and experts across synthetic biology, materials science, immunology, oncology, and more, the team will receive its funding through the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, a newly launched initiative led by Veiseh that exists to help life-saving medical innovation scale quickly.

"Rice is proud to be the recipient of the second major funding award from the ARPA-H, a new funding agency established last year to support research that catalyzes health breakthroughs," Rice President Reginald DesRoches says. "The research Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh is doing in leading this team is truly groundbreaking and could potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. This is the type of research that makes a significant impact on the world.”

The initial focus of the technology will be on ovarian cancer, and this funding agreement includes a first-phase clinical trial of HAMMR for the treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer that's expected to take place in the fourth year of THOR’s multi-year project.

“The technology is broadly applicable for peritoneal cancers that affect the pancreas, liver, lungs and other organs,” Veiseh says. “The first clinical trial will focus on refractory recurrent ovarian cancer, and the benefit of that is that we have an ongoing trial for ovarian cancer with our encapsulated cytokine ‘drug factory’ technology. We'll be able to build on that experience. We have already demonstrated a unique model to go from concept to clinical trial within five years, and HAMMR is the next iteration of that approach.”

TMC again expands global impact with new Netherlands partnership

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The Texas Medical Center may be based in Houston, but the organization has again grown its global impact.

Since 2016, TMC’s BioBridges have worked with 88 startup companies. Those include strategic alliances with four other countries. Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland are all among TMC’s BioBridges partners. As of today, add the Netherlands to that list.

On September 27, TMC president and CEO, William F. McKeon, and Carmen van Vilsteren, chair of Health~Holland, Top Sector Life Sciences & Health (LSH), signed an agreement in Rotterdam. The TMC Netherlands BioBridge Memorandum of Understanding codifies the innovative goals of the partnership. Essentially, the BioBridge program provides a means for entrepreneurs, researchers, clinicians and industry partners from other countries to access the US market, as well as TMC experts.

“The TMC Netherlands BioBridge represents an unparalleled opportunity for collaboration and growth,” Ashley McPhail, chief external affairs & administration officer at Texas Medical Center said in a press release. “The Netherlands has solidified its position as a global leader in the field of life sciences and health, with a thriving ecosystem of research institutions, innovative companies, and highly skilled professionals. This strategic partnership will bring positive benefits to patients, clinicians and industry partners on a global scale.”

This lifeline for international healthcare companies makes expansion into the United States far smoother. The Global Innovators Launch Pad allows for startup founders to take part in a 10-week residency at the TMC Innovation Factory that will teach them about foundational infrastructure, clinical evidence and funding in the US.

“Since Texas is an important hub for innovation in the MedTech and digital health sectors, the collaboration with Texas Medical Center creates opportunities for Dutch companies looking to expand their international reach. Vice versa, it gives companies in Texas access to the vibrant Dutch Life Sciences & Health sector,” said van Vilsteren.

That exchange includes members of the TMC gaining the opportunity to participate in the Health~Holland Visitors Programme (HVP), “Shaping the Healthcare of the Future.”

The annual event invites high-level representatives from the private sector, NGOs, knowledge institutions, healthcare providers and different tiers of government to share their expertise.

It's the fifth partnership of its kind for TMC, with the last one being with Ireland, announced last year. TMC's other global initiatives include accelerators with Denmark and the United Kingdom, both announced earlier this year.

Houston startup founders prepare to scale globally following Shark Tank success

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 205

While Milkify's founders — husband and wife team Pedro Silva and Berkley Luck — secured partners on a popular business pitch and investment show, the entire experience almost didn't happen.

Silva and Luck, who got her PhD in molecular and biomedical s at Baylor College of Medicine, founded the company to provide breast milk freeze drying as a service to Houston-area families. Now, Milkify has customers across the country, but the duo didn't know if going through the process would be worth the investment and publicity, or if it would just be a distraction.

"The competitor in me wanted to be the first breast milk company to go on the show and to tell our story to the world — to show the world what my wife came up with that we thought was so great," Silva says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "It was probably the scariest 45 minutes of my life."

But the sharks bit. Milkify's episode aired in April, and two investors — Gwyneth Paltrow and Lori Greiner — agreed to a $400,000 convertible note for 20 percent equity in the company. Paltrow even said on the show that she would have used the service when she was breastfeeding.

"It was empowering," Luck says of getting to wear her white coat on TV and share the story of how she came up with the idea of Milkify. "It was important to me when we went on the show to express that this had a scientific basis, that we didn't start this lightly, and that we've made huge strides in doing this in the absolute safest way possible."

Silva says they can't talk about some of the details of the show or the deal, but since then, Milkify has reached new customers, received additional investment interest, grown its team, and built out its plan to scale, the founders shared on the podcast. The team also shares its big-picture scale plans, which include tapping international partners to potentially take Milkify's tech global.

"Our vision is for every family to have access to breast milk formula, but instead of re-creating breast milk in a lab, we're doing it with mom's own milk," Silva says, mentioning a partnership with a breast milk bank that will convert its operation from freezing to freeze drying donated milk. "We're also working with groups in the UK and Australia to launch similar services using our patented technology."

"By the end of the year, we hope to see some announcements with those partnerships across the globe."

From the beginning, the importance of Milkify's team has been on supporting working parents to give them the best way to care for their families, Silva says. And for Luck — who says she's proud of the integrity Milkify has at its core despite competitors offering lower-quality and, in some cases, dangerous alternatives — she sees a lot of research benefits for the company.

"It's amazing to be at this leading edge, not just of innovation but of research, and to be able to still put out meaningful advances as an industry partner, not just as an academic," Luck says, adding that she hopes to be able to continue to contribute to the ongoing research into breast milk.

Luck and Silva share more about their Shark Tank experience, their co-founder strengths, and the future of Milkify on the podcast. Listen to the interview here — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.