Folks in The Woodlands spend big bucks on the holidays. Visit Houston Texas

If you live in The Woodlands, Sugar Land, or League City, you may be making a holiday shopping list as long as a stocking and checking it more than twice.

These three Houston suburbs rank among the 10 U.S. cities with the fattest holiday budgets, according to a new study from personal finance website WalletHub.

The Woodlands ranks third nationally, at $3,073, while Sugar Land comes in fourth ($3,023) and League City lands at No. 10 ($2,778). Pearland ranks 13th ($2,669) and Missouri City appears at No. 80 ($1,499), while Houston ranks 372nd ($783).

“To help consumers avoid post-holiday regret, WalletHub calculated the maximum holiday budget for each of 570 U.S. cities using five key characteristics of the population, such as income, age, and savings-to-monthly expenses ratio,” the website says.

A suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth wraps up the No. 1 spot on the national list. Flower Mound, according to WalletHub, boasts the most Santa-friendly budget among all the cities: $3,427. Flower Mound ranked second last year ($2,973) and third in 2019 ($2,937).

Seven other DFW cities unwrap rankings in the top 100:

  • Allen, No. 12, $2,688.
  • Frisco, No. 30, $2,133.
  • Plano, No. 33, $2,044.
  • Richardson, No. 43, $1,857.
  • Carrollton, No. 56, $1,698.
  • North Richland Hills, No. 76, $1,544.
  • Irving, No. 89, $1,439.

The two biggest cities in North Texas are on the Scrooge-y side: Fort Worth appears at No. 257 ($920), and Dallas ranks 365th ($787).

In the Austin area, the holiday budgets are more on the lean side, like Santa on a diet:

  • Cedar Park, No. 48, $1,770.
  • Round Rock, No. 134, $1,200.
  • Austin, No. 188, $1,049.

Meanwhile, the San Antonio area’s two entrants on the list feel like they’ve earned lumps of coal:

  • New Braunfels, No. 196, $1,034.
  • San Antonio, No. 371, $783.

“In general, consumers are ready to spend and to have social experiences both within and outside the home. This spurs consumption in multiple categories, including food, décor, apparel, and gifts. This trend toward increased spending is mitigated by lingering COVID health concerns, including reticence to shop in physical stores, gather in groups, and travel,” Barbara Stewart, interim chair of the University of Houston’s Department of Human Development and Consumer Sciences, tells WalletHub.

The National Retail Federation predicts a record-shattering holiday season for retail sales, growing between 8.5 percent and 10.5 percent over 2020 to between $843.4 billion and $859 billion. Meanwhile, professional services firm Deloitte envisions a 7 percent to 9 percent spike in holiday spending this year versus last year. Commercial estate services provider pegs the projected increase at 8.4 percent.

“The outlook for the holiday season looks very bright,” says Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. “The unusual and beneficial position we find ourselves in is that households have increased spending vigorously throughout most of 2021 and remain with plenty of holiday purchasing power.”

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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German biotech co. to relocate to Houston thanks to $4.75M CPRIT grant

money moves

Armed with a $4.75 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, a German biotech company will relocate to Houston to work on developing a cancer medicine that fights solid tumors.

Eisbach Bio is conducting a clinical trial of its EIS-12656 therapy at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center. In September, the company announced its first patient had undergone EIS-12656 treatment. EIS-12656 works by suppressing cancer-related genome reorganization generated by DNA.

The funding from the cancer institute will support the second phase of the EIS-12656 trial, focusing on homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) tumors.

“HRD occurs when a cell loses its ability to repair double-strand DNA breaks, leading to genomic alterations and instability that can contribute to cancerous tumor growth,” says the institute.

HRD is a biomarker found in most advanced stages of ovarian cancer, according to Medical News Today. DNA constantly undergoes damage and repairs. One of the repair routes is the

homologous recombination repair (HRR) system.

Genetic mutations, specifically those in the BCRA1 and BCRA1 genes, cause an estimated 10 percent of cases of ovarian cancer, says Medical News Today.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) says the Eisbach Bio funding will bolster the company’s “transformative approach to HRD tumor therapy, positioning Texas as a hub for innovative cancer treatments while expanding clinical options for HRD patients.”

The cancer institute also handed out grants to recruit several researchers to Houston:

  • $2 million to recruit Norihiro Goto from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to MD Anderson.
  • $2 million to recruit Xufeng Chen from New York University to MD Anderson.
  • $2 million to recruit Xiangdong Lv from MD Anderson to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

In addition, the institute awarded:

  • $9,513,569 to Houston-based Marker Therapeutics for a first-phase study to develop T cell-based immunotherapy for treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer.
  • $2,499,990 to Lewis Foxhall of MD Anderson for a colorectal cancer screening program.
  • $1,499,997 to Abigail Zamorano of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston for a cervical cancer screening program.
  • $1,497,342 to Jennifer Minnix of MD Anderson for a lung cancer screening program in Northeast Texas.
  • $449,929 to Roger Zoorob of the Baylor College of Medicine for early prevention of lung cancer.

On November 20, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute granted funding of $89 million to an array of people and organizations involved in cancer prevention and research.

West Coast innovation organization unveils new location in Houston suburb to boost Texas tech ecosystem

plugging in

Leading innovation platform Plug and Play announced the opening of its new flagship Houston-area location in Sugar Land, which is its fourth location in Texas.

Plug and Play has accelerated over 2,700 startups globally last year with corporate partners that include Dell Technologies, Daikin, Microsoft, LG Chem, Shell, and Mercedes. The company’s portfolio includes PayPal, Dropbox, LendingClub, and Course Hero, with 8 percent of the portfolio valued at over $100 million.

The deal, which facilitated by the Sugar Land Office of Economic Development and Tourism, will bring a new office for the organization to Sugar Land Town Square with leasing and hiring between December and January. The official launch is slated for the first quarter of 2025, and will feature 15 startups announced on Selection Day.

"By expanding to Sugar Land, we’re creating a space where startups can access resources, build partnerships, and scale rapidly,” VP Growth Strategy at Plug and Play Sherif Saadawi says in a news release. “This location will help fuel Texas' innovation ecosystem, providing entrepreneurs with the tools and networks they need to drive real-world impact and contribute to the state’s technological and economic growth."

Plug and Play plans to hire four full-time equivalent employees and accelerate two startup batches per year. The focus will be on “smart cities,” which include energy, health, transportation, and mobility sectors. One Sugar Land City representative will serve as a board member.

“We are excited to welcome Plug and Play to Sugar Land,” Mayor of Sugar Land Joe Zimmerma adds. “This investment will help us connect with corporate contacts and experts in startups and businesses that would take us many years to reach on our own. It allows us to create a presence, attract investments and jobs to the city, and hopefully become a base of operations for some of these high-growth companies.”

The organization originally entered the Houston market in 2019 and now has locations in Bryan/College Station, Frisco, and Cedar Park in Texas.