Houston Nobel Prize nominee earns latest award for public health research

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Dr. Peter Hotez with Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi. Photo courtesy of TMC

Houston vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez can add one more prize to his shelf.

Hotez — dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics — is no stranger to impressive laurels. In 2022, he was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his low-cost COVID vaccine.

His first big win of 2025 is this year’s Hill Prize, awarded by the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST).

Hotez and his team were selected to receive $500,000 from Lyda Hill Philanthropies to help fund The Texas Virosphere Project. The endeavor was born to help create a predictive disease atlas relating to climate disasters. Because the climate crisis has ushered in changes to the distribution of diseases, including dengue, chikungunya, Zika, Chagas disease, typhus and tick-borne relapsing fever, it’s important to predict outbreaks before they become a menace.

Rice University researchers are collaborating with Hotez and his team on a project that combines climate science and metagenomics to access 3,000 insect genomes. The goal is to aid health departments in controlling disease and informing policy.

The Hill Prize, which is being awarded to six innovators for the first time, thanks to a $10 million commitment from the philanthropic organization, is intended to back ideas that are high-risk and high-reward. Each of the projects was chosen for its potential real-life impact on some of Texas's — and the world’s — most challenging situations. Hotez’s prize is the first Hill Prize to be given in the realm of public health. The additional winners are:

Hill Prize in Medicine: Kenneth M. Hargreaves, D.D.S., Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Hill Prize in Engineering: Joan Frances Brennecke, Ph.D. (NAE), The University of Texas at Austin
Hill Prize in Biological Sciences: David J. Mangelsdorf, Ph.D. (NAM, NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center
Hill Prize in Physical Sciences: James Chelikowsky, Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin
Hill Prize in Technology: Robert De Lorenzo, M.D., EmergenceMed, LLC

Read about other Houston-area researchers recognized by TAMEST here.

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Houston's Nobel Prize winner, Jim Allison, is the star of Breakthrough, which premieres on Independent Lens at 9 pm Monday, April 27, on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS Video App. Photo via SXSW.com

Documentary featuring Houston Nobel Prize winner to air on PBS

to-watch list

Not all heroes wear capes. In fact, our current coronavirus heroes are donning face masks as they save lives. One local health care hero has a different disease as his enemy, and you'll soon be able to stream his story.

Dr. James "Jim" Allison won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in battling cancer by treating the immune system — rather than the tumor. Allison, who is the chair of Immunology and executive director of the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson Cancer Center, has quietly and often, singularly, waged war with cancer utilizing this unique approach.

The soft-spoken trailblazer is the subject of an award-winning documentary, Jim Allison: Breakthrough, which will air on PBS and its streaming channels on Monday, April 27 at 9 pm (check local listings for channel information). Lauded as "the most cheering film of the year" by the Washington Post, the film follows Allison's personal journey to defeat cancer, inspired and driven by the disease killed his mother.

Breakthrough is narrated by Woody Harrelson and features music by Willie Nelson, adding a distinct hint of Texana. (The film was a star at 2019's South by Southwest film festival.) The documentary charts Alice, Texas native as he enrolls at the University of Texas, Austin and ultimately, cultivates an interest in T cells and the immune system — and begins to frequent Austin's legendary music scene. Fascinated by the immune system's power to protect the body from disease, Allison's research soon focuses on how it can be used to treat cancer.

Viewers will find Allison charming, humble, and entertaining: the venerable doctor is also an accomplished blues harmonica player. Director Bill Haney weaves Allison's personal story with the medical case of Sharon Belvin, a patient diagnosed with melanoma in 2004 who soon enrolled in Allison's clinical trials. Belvin has since been entirely cancer-free, according to press materials.

"We are facing a global health challenge that knows no boundaries or race or religion, and we are all relying on gifted and passionate scientists and healthcare workers to contain and ultimately beat this thing," said Haney, in a statement. "Jim Allison and the unrelenting scientists like him are my heroes – and I'll bet they become yours!"

Jim Allison: Breakthrough premieres on Independent Lens at 9 pm Monday, April 27, on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS Video App.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Jim Allison, immunotherapy researcher at MD Anderson and Nobel Prize recipient, is the subject of a new film that premiered at SXSW. Photo courtesy of MD Anderson Cancer Center

Film about Nobel Prize-winning Houston scientist premieres at SXSW

Now showing

For most of his career, James Allison has been a cancer research wildcatter fighting an oftentimes lonely battle for the advancement of immunotherapy. The medical community has historically been skeptical of the science, but nonetheless Allison dedicated his life to developing a better treatment to the disease that has claimed so many lives — including his mother's.

Last year, Allison, the chair of Immunology and executive director of the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson, won the 2018 Nobel Prize in medicine, and Breakthrough, a film about Allison's progression from early researcher to Nobel Prize recipient, premiered on March 9 at the 2019 SXSW Interactive festival.

But despite the Nobel Prize and the new film both validating the science to the public, Allison says there's a lot more work to be done in immunotherapy. Allison, his colleague, Padmanee Sharma, and the filmmaker for Breakthrough, Bill Haney, hosted a discussion at SXSW about the future of immunotherapy.

"It's a time of considerable optimism — and we're just at the beginning," says Allison.

The film focuses on the man behind the science — a 70-year-old, harmonica-playing researcher from small-town Alice, Texas. It's both an ode to Allison's career and a thought-provoking take on all the work left to be done in the industry.

Immunotherapy is the process of targeting one's immune system's T-cells, infection-fighting white blood cells, to attack cancer cells. Sharma, a fellow MD Anderson oncology expert and clinician, says their work has received clinical approvals for treating Melanoma, kidney cancer, lung cancer, and bladder cancer. The scientists are now focused on expanding that treatment to other cancer types and building upon the established platform they've created, while also making sure nothing comes in the way of the facts of the science.

"It really requires that we dedicate ourselves to the basic science, understanding it and educating people about it, so we don't allow the facts and science get muddied by things that are political or nonfactual," Sharma says.

In a lot of ways, this is what Breakthrough has been able to do — communicate the facts on a platform where anyone can understand the science.

"We have a revolution on our hands, and thankfully we have people like Bill who can really tell the story well, because maybe as a scientist and a clinician, we're not always equally talented on telling the story to laypeople," Sharma says.

Moving forward, Allison says he's focused on finding out why the treatment fails in some instances, and he's determined to progress immunotherapy's success rate from the 20 to 40 percent rate he says he sees it at now to 100 percent.

"We've got all the basic tools, and we know what the main issues are," Allison says. "There's still a lot to do, but we need to be smart and do fact-based and mechanism-based combinations."

Jim Allison's groundbreaking work with T cells helped him net the award. Photo courtesy of MD Anderson Cancer Center

Houston scientist wins Nobel Prize for breakthrough cancer treatment

Research Recognition

A University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center scientist has been lauded for his cancer research. Jim Allison, Ph.D., was announced as the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on October 1.

Allison, who is the chair of Immunology and executive director of the Immunotherapy Platform, is the first MD Anderson scientist to receive the world's most coveted award for discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine. Allison won for his work in launching an effective new way to attack cancer by treating the immune system rather than the tumor, according to a release.

"I'm honored and humbled to receive this prestigious recognition," Allison says in a statement. "A driving motivation for scientists is simply to push the frontiers of knowledge. I didn't set out to study cancer, but to understand the biology of T cells, these incredible cells to travel our bodies and work to protect us."

Allison shares the award with Tasuku Honjo, M.D., Ph.D., of Kyoto University in Japan. When announcing the honor, the Nobel Assembly of Karolinska Institute in Stockholm noted in a statement that "stimulating the ability of our immune system to attack tumor cells, this year's Nobel Prize laureates have established an entirely new principle for cancer therapy."

The prize recognizes Allison's basic science discoveries on the biology of T cells, the adaptive immune system's soldiers, and his invention of immune checkpoint blockade to treat cancer. According to MD Anderson, Allison's crucial insight was to block a protein on T cells that acts as a brake on their activation, freeing the T cells to attack cancer. He developed an antibody to block the checkpoint protein CTLA-4 and demonstrated the success of the approach in experimental models.

Allison's work led to the development of the first immune checkpoint inhibitor drug which would become the first to extend the survival of patients with late-stage melanoma. Follow-up studies show 20 percent of those treated live for at least three years, with many living for 10 years and beyond, unprecedented results, according to the cancer center.

"Jim Allison's accomplishments on behalf of patients cannot be overstated," says MD Anderson president Peter WT Pisters, M.D., in a statement. "His research has led to life-saving treatments for people who otherwise would have little hope. The significance of immunotherapy as a form of cancer treatment will be felt for generations to come."

"I never dreamed my research would take the direction it has," Allison adds. "It's a great, emotional privilege to meet cancer patients who've been successfully treated with immune checkpoint blockade. They are living proof of the power of basic science, of following our urge to learn and to understand how things work."

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This story originally appeared on CultureMap.

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With boost from Houston, Texas is the No. 1 state for economic development

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Texas is on a 14-year winning streak as the top state for attracting job-creating business location and expansion projects.

Once again, Texas has claimed Site Selection magazine’s Governor’s Cup. This year’s honor recognizes the state with the highest number of economic development projects in 2025. Texas landed more than 1,400 projects last year.

Ron Starner, executive vice president of Site Selection, calls Texas “a dynasty in economic development.”

Among metro areas, Houston lands at No. 2 for the most economic development projects secured last year (590), behind No. 1 Chicago and ahead of No. 3 Dallas-Fort Worth.

In praising Houston as a project magnet, Gov. Greg Abbott cites the November announcement by pharmaceutical giant Lilly that it’s building a $6.5 billion manufacturing plant at Houston’s Generation Park.

“Growth in the Greater Houston region is a great benefit to our state’s economy, a major location for foreign direct investment and key industry sectors like energy, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, and life sciences,” Abbott tells Site Selection. “Houston is also home to one of the largest concentrations of U.S. headquarters for companies from around the world.”

In 2025, Fortune ranked Houston as the U.S. city with the third-highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters (26).

Texas retained the Governor’s Cup by gaining over 1,400 business location and expansion projects last year, representing more than $75 billion in capital investments and producing more than 42,000 new jobs.

Site Selection says Texas’ project count for 2025 handily beat second-place Illinois (680 projects) and third-place Ohio (467 projects). Texas’ number for 2025 represented 18% of all qualifying U.S. projects tracked by Site Selection.

“You can see that we are on a trajectory to ensure our economic diversification is going to inoculate us in good times, as well as bad times, to ensure our economy is still going to grow, still create new jobs, prosperity, and opportunities for Texans going forward,” Abbott says.

Houston e-commerce giant Cart.com raises $180M, surpasses $1B in funding

fresh funding

Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify information about Cart.com's investors.

Houston-based commerce and logistics platform Cart.com has raised $180 million in growth capital from private equity firm Springcoast Partners, pushing the startup past the $1 billion funding mark since its founding in 2020.

Cart.com says it will use the capital to scale its logistics network, expand AI capabilities and develop workflow automation tools.

“This investment will strengthen our balance sheet and provide us with the flexibility to accelerate our strategic priorities,” Omair Tariq, CEO of Cart.com, said in a news release. “We’ve built a platform that combines commerce software with a scaled logistics network, and we’re just getting started.”

In conjunction with the funding, Springcoast executive-in-residence Russell Klein has been appointed to Cart.com’s board of directors. Before joining Springcoast, he was chief commercial officer at Austin-based Commerce.com (Nasdaq: CMRC). Klein co-led Commerce.com’s IPO, led the company’s mergers-and-acquisitions strategy and played a key role in several funding rounds.

“The team at Cart.com has demonstrated excellence in their ability to scale efficiently while continuing to innovate,” Klein said. “I’m excited to join the board and support the company as it expands its AI-driven capabilities, deepens enterprise relationships, and further strengthens its position as a category-defining commerce and fulfillment platform.”

Before this funding round, Cart.com had raised $872 million in venture capital and reached a valuation of about $1.6 billion, according to CB Insights. With the new funding, the startup has collected over $1 billion in just six years.

This is the income required to be a middle class earner in Houston in 2026

Cashing In

A new study tracking the upper and lower thresholds for middle class households across the nation's largest cities has revealed Houstonians need to make at least a grand more than last year to maintain their middle class status this year.

According to SmartAsset's just-released annual report, "What It Takes to Be Middle Class in America – 2026 Study," Houston households need to make anywhere from $42,907 to $128,722 to qualify as middle class earners this year.

Compared to 2025, Houstonians need to make $1,153 more per year to meet the minimum threshold for a middle class status, whereas the upper bound has stretched $3,448 higher. The median income for a Houston household in 2024 was $64,361, the study added.

SmartAsset's experts used 2024 Census Bureau median household income data for the 100 biggest U.S. cities and all 50 states and determined middle class income ranges by using a variation of Pew Research's definition of a middle class household, stating the salary range is "two-thirds to double the median U.S. salary."

In the report's ranking of the U.S. cities with the highest household incomes needed to maintain a middle class status, Houston ranked No. 80.

In the report's state-by-state comparison, Texas has the 24th highest middle class income range. Overall, Texas households need to make between $53,147 and $159,442 to be labeled "middle class" in 2026. For additional context, the median income for a Texas household in 2024 came out to $79,721.

"Often, the expectations that come with the term 'middle class' include reaching home ownership, raising kids, the comfort of modest emergency funds and retirement savings, and the occasional splurge or vacation," the report said. "And as the median household income varies widely across the U.S. depending on the local job market, housing market, infrastructure and other factors, so does swing the bounds on what constitutes a middle class income in America."

What it takes to be middle class elsewhere around Texas

Two Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs – Frisco and Plano – have some of the highest middle class income ranges in the country for 2026, SmartAsset found.

Frisco households need to make between $96,963 and $290,888 to qualify as middle class this year, which is the third-highest middle class income range nationwide.

Plano's middle class income range is the eighth highest nationally, with households needing to make between $77,267 and $231,802 for the designation.

Salary range needed to be a middle class earner in other Texas cities:

No. 28 – Austin: between $60,287 and $180,860
No. 40 – Irving: between $56,566 and $169,698
No. 44 – Fort Worth: between $55,002 and $165,006
No. 57 – Garland: between $50,531 and $151,594
No. 60 – Arlington: between $49,592 and $148,77
No. 61 – Dallas: between $49,549 and $148,646
No. 73 – Corpus Christi: between $44,645 and $133,934
No. 77 – San Antonio: between $44,117 and $132,352
No. 83 – Lubbock: between $41,573 and $124,720
No. 84 – Laredo: between $41,013 and $123,038
No. 89 – El Paso: between $39,955 and $119,864

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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