How this Houston innovator is using his personal connection to ALS fuel his fight for a cure

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Daniel Barvin has a neurodegenerative disease in his near future. He joined Houston-based Coya Therapeutics to help fight for a cure to the aggressively deadly ALS. Photo via Getty Images

We can never predict how our lives will turn out, but then maybe some of us can. Genetic testing showed that I, like my grandfather, aunt, uncle and father before me, would most likely die of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS, and/or frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) in my 40s.

Being 36, it’s possible that fear could have overtaken my life, but instead I chose to fight for every chance to change not only my life, but the lives of millions who are suffering or may one day suffer from neurodegenerative disease.

ALS is a rare disease that robs one of their ability to control their muscles, leading them to lose their ability to walk, talk and eventually breathe. Eighty percent of cases are sporadic (of unknown origin) and 20 percent have known genetic causes.

When I learned that I carried the C9ORF72 genetic variant, a causative genetic variant for ALS/FTD) my first instincts were to help others understand their status and where they could turn for help. I saw a vacuum for resources and understanding in the genetic ALS space and I knew that thousands were suffering in darkness.

Through the efforts of many, we created the first ever nonprofit – Genetic ALS & FTD: End the Legacy – focused on fighting for the genetic ALS and FTD communities. After making great strides to fight for our rights and access to care, I was asked if I could help my current CEO, Howard Berman, commercialize Dr. Stanley Appel’s regulatory T Cell (Treg) therapy for ALS.

I joined Coya Therapeutics in 2021 as the first employee, working to build a company that would one day bring life changing therapies to patients. Coya’s therapies are based on Dr. Appel’s discovery that neurodegenerative diseases drive an inflammatory response. As inflammation rises, it damages regulatory T cells, and when Tregs are damaged, inflammation becomes a persistent condition driving degeneration and eventually death.

It was at that point that my life changed from the advocacy world to the therapeutic world. Now over three years later, we are closer than ever to making a paradigm change for how patients with ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases are treated.

At Coya, we believe that combination biologics are the future of treating neurodegenerative diseases. COYA 302 is our lead asset, which has shown promising results in a proof-of-concept study released in March of 2023. We are currently working towards a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial for COYA 302 in ALS set to kick off later this year.

I never wanted to live a life so damned by disease, but when put between a rock and a hard place, the only choice is to fight. I don’t know how my life will end, but I hope that my children will know that I faced a great challenge head on with pride and resilience.

In the end, it is the combination of both the worlds I work in that lead to better outcomes for patients, raising awareness and lifesaving research. This ALS Awareness Month, please join us and our partners like the ALS Association, End the Legacy, and I AM ALS in raising awareness about these conditions, their risks, and treatment options.

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Daniel Barvin is the vice president of operations and patient advocacy at Coya Therapeutics.

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Houston investor on why 2025 will be the year of exits

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Samantha Lewis will be the first to admit that the past few years have been tough on startups and venture capital investors alike. However, as she explains on the Houston Innovators Podcast, the new year is expected to look very different.

"We're super excited going into 2025," Lewis, who is a partner at Houston-based VC firm Mercury. "For us, 2024 was a year of laying a lot of groundwork for what we believe is going to be a massive year of startup exits and liquidity for the venture ecosystem. We've been hard at work making sure our companies are prepared for that."

Mercury, in fact, has already gotten a taste recent exits last year, with three of its portfolio companies celebrating exits — all with Houston roots. Fintech platform Brassica was acquired by BitGo in February, and Apparatus, founded as Topl in Houston, was acquired early last year. The third deal has yet to be announced publicly.

And it's just getting started, Lewis says. She explains that all of the companies in Mercury's portfolio that are promising — albeit not break-out, to-be-billion-dollar companies — are going to have opportunities to sell in 2025 and 2026.

"What we've started to do — and I encourage everyone to do this if you're working on a startup — is just start to just engage with strategic buyers, investment bankers, and people you think might be a great fit to buy your company," Lewis says, "because we really think that the next few years will be the best liquidity years we've seen in a really long time. And if you're not ready for it, you're going to miss the boat."

In addition to sharing her advice to get "exit preparedness," Lewis explains some specific tech trends she's keeping an eye on in Mercury's "power theme," which she works on directly. This encompases fintech, blockchain, web3 and more.

Houston private equity firm beats target on first investment fund

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Houston-based private equity firm Sallyport has raised $160 million for its first investment fund, exceeding the target amount by $10 million.

The Sallyport Partners Fund focuses primarily on investments in founder- and family-owned businesses, corporate carve-outs and startups in various industries.

The firm’s chairman, Doug Foshee, seeded the fund. He and managing partners Kyle Bethancourt and Ryan Howard started the firm in 2023.

“Sallyport Partners Fund was created to utilize the proven processes our team has developed over time to generate value for like-minded investors on a larger and more impactful scale,” Foshee says in a news release.

Investors in the Sallyport fund include entrepreneurs, business executives and influential Texas families. Aside from Foshee, names of the fund’s investors weren’t disclosed.

“We are deeply committed to working hand-in-hand with management teams to drive transformative growth and generate long-term value,” says Bethancourt. “Our operational capabilities are forged from decades of firsthand experience leading, investing in, and building thriving businesses from the ground up. We have a unique appreciation for the management team’s perspective because we’ve been in their shoes.”

Those shoes have covered some pretty impressive ground:

  • Foshee is former chairman, president, and CEO of Houston-based El Paso Corp., which owned and operated a 44,000-mile natural gas pipeline network. In 2012, El Paso merged with Houston-based pipeline company Kinder Morgan in a multibillion-dollar deal.
  • Before Sallyport, Bethancourt was a vice president in the credit division of Blackstone, an investment powerhouse with more than $1 trillion in assets under management. Earlier, he worked at D.E. Shaw & Co., a New York City-based hedge fund with more than $65 billion in assets under management.
  • Before Sallyport, Howard worked at Platform Partners, a Houston-based private equity firm. Earlier, he worked for the natural resources arm of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.

Houston university students earn top honors at global energy-poverty competition

Winner, winner

A student-led team from the University of Houston and Texas A&M University took home top prizes at last month's Switch Energy Alliance Case Competition.

Competing virtually against 145 teams from 34 countries, the students, known as The Dream Team, won third place for their plan to address energy poverty in Egypt and Turkey. They were awarded $5,000 in prize money.

The competition challenges student teams to solve real-world energy problems to "drive progress towards a sustainable and equitable energy future," according to the Switch competition's website.

“The Switch competition tackles major issues that we often don’t think about on a daily basis in the United States, so it is a really interesting and tough challenge to solve,” Sarah Grace Kimberly, a senior finance major at UH and member of the team, said in a statement from the university

Kimberly was joined by Pranjal Sheth, a fellow senior finance major at UH, and Nathan Hazlett, a finance graduate student at TAMU with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering.

The Dream Team developed a 10-year plan to address Egypt and Turkey's energy poverty that would create 200,000 jobs, reduce energy costs and improve energy access in rural areas. Its major components included:

  • Developing rooftop and utility-scale solar farms and solar canopies over irrigation canals
  • Expanding wind power capacity by taking advantage of high wind speeds in the Gulf of Suez and Western Desert
  • Deploying cost-efficient technologies along the Nile for rural electrification

“People in the United States should be extremely thankful for the infrastructure and systems that allow us to thrive with power, food and water,” Sheth said in the statement. “Texas went through Winter Storm Uri in 2021—people were without electricity for weeks, and lives were lost. It still comes up in conversations, but certain regions of the world, developing nations, live that experience almost every day. We need to make that a larger part of the conversation and work to help them.”

Team Quwa, a team of four students from the University of Texas at Austin, took home second place and $7,000 in prize money.

“This journey was both intellectually enriching and personally fulfilling,” Mohamed Awad, a PhD candidate at the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, said in a statement from UT. “Through the case competition, we had an opportunity to contribute meaningful ideas to address a critical global issue.”

Team Energy Nexus from India earned the top prize and took home $10,000, according to a release from Switch.

Switch Energy Alliance is an Austin-based non-profit that's focused on energy education. The Switch competition began in 2020. Teams of three to four students create a presentation and 15-minute video. The top five teams present their case studies live and answer questions before a panel of judges.

More than 3,200 students from 55 countries have competed over the years. Click here to watch the 2024 final round.

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This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

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