Growing femtech company chooses Houston for first out-of-state expansion

moving in

After growing in Chicago and raising funding, Partum Health selected Houston to expand its femtech platform. Photo via Getty Image

A startup dedicated to comprehensive pregnancy, birth and postpartum care has expanded from its Chicago birthplace to Houston.

Last summer, Partum Health raised $3.1 million in seed funding, which makes it possible for the company to begin a nationwide expansion. That begins in Space City.

“We looked at states where there is work to do on outcomes for maternal health. Texas rose to the top and Houston, in many ways is fairly close to Chicago, our home city. The really thriving healthcare ecosystem attracted us as well,” CEO and Co-Founder Meghan Doyle tells InnovationMap.

As a mom of a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old herself, Doyle says that she experienced the gap firsthand in what’s available to women beyond what her obstetrician or midwife does.

“You had to work really hard to cobble together the care you needed. It was a matter of putting together my personal experiences of realizing it’s not just me, it’s systematic,” says Doyle. “I couldn’t get that problem out of my head.”

Neither could her co-founder and head of operations, Matt Rogers, a father of twins whose family had to navigate the NICU and life-threatening complications. They started working together on the business in earnest during the COVID shutdown and debuted Partum Health at the beginning of 2021.

Partum has begun partnering with obstetricians and midwives to help select complementary care that includes lactation support, pelvic floor physical therapy, mental health services, nutrition counseling and doula care. What’s unique about the plan is that, from aiding in behavioral health problems to addressing nutritional issues, the user’s team is distributed around the Houston area and are fully virtual. Physical therapy and other services that must be done in-person may take place either in-home or at third-party locations.

“We’re still in the process of credentialing with insurance companies,” says Doyle.

In Illinois, Partum is already working with BlueCross BlueShield, United Healthcare, Aetna and Cigna for clinical care, so Doyle says she is confident that those companies will soon follow suit in Texas.

While hiring a team in Houston that includes a client care lead, Doyle says that Partum is simultaneously providing services and getting to know the market better. They’re also building more bundled models of care to better assist users in their new landscape.

Doyle and Partum Healthcare participated in the Ignite Healthcare Network’s 2023 program, which concluded last week with a pitch competition. Ignite helps female healthcare founders to connect with mentors and other industry experts that will help them navigate the health tech ecosystem. Doyle was one of nine finalists, but did not place in the top three. But she says the program has helped prepare her for success nonetheless.

“In our world, you’re always pitching,” she admits.

The next steps for Partum include a 2024 rife with expansion. Because building relationships with insurance happens on a state-by-state basis, the company will be able to help women around Texas soon after the company is comfortably established in Houston. The Dallas-Fort Worth area will likely be first, followed by Austin and San Antonio.

“We know there’s a huge gap in access to care that may mean evolving a little bit and reaching out across the state,” Doyle says.

Last month, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission reported that 90 percent of the state’s pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. With access to care like what Partum provides, those complications could become a thing of the past.

This Mother's Day, The Motherhood Center's founder is looking back on 20 years of care for Houston's new and expecting mothers. Getty Images

Houston specialist reflects on innovation and technology's effect on pregnancy care

Guest column

Mother's Day this Sunday will be a very different kind of day for mothers across the world, and I found myself reflecting on the innovation and evolution of pregnancy care and the different options women have nowadays.

When I founded The Motherhood Center in 2000, I had one simple goal, which was to provide Houston's new and expecting moms with unparalleled support and guidance. Now, 20 years later, we provide a full range of services for parents across every stage of parenthood. My team and I have held true to this mission, and, as new technologies and schools of thought emerged, so too have we evolved.

The evolution of family planning

One of the biggest changes we have witnessed over the past two decades is people's approach to family planning. We are seeing a lot more women choosing to have children later in life. With all the wonderful technological advancements — such as IVF, fertility treatments and egg freezing — we have seen women focus on their careers and start a family at an older age. One unexpected result of this is kind of funny – we are seeing a lot more twins and triplets.

We've also seen an increase in involvement from fathers. More and more dads are taking paternity leave these days – we hope to see that trend continue to grow. They are also coming to classes and getting involved in the pregnancies. Often, they are the ones who call us to learn more about our services.

New technologies and products

Technology has prompted some of the biggest changes in pregnancy. There are a lot of devices that new parents can use these days — from baby monitors, breathing and movement monitors, and much more. All this technology routes directly to parent's smartphones so they can know in real time what is always happening with their baby. While we love that parents can be more informed, we also don't want them to become so dependent on technology that they stop trusting their instincts. It is our job to encourage them to trust themselves (along with technology) so they can be the best parents they can be.

Another way technology has affected our business is that we are now able to reach our clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week through our website. We get a lot of form submissions late at night – particularly for support with breastfeeding and sleep training. We might not be able to answer the phone at 2 a.m., but our website has the resources to support new parents no matter the time of day.

For better or for worse, we have seen a huge increase in the number of products that are available for baby and mom. While there are some products that we absolutely love, many of the new products that have flooded the market are not needed. Because of this, we created a boutique at our center to help parents purchase only the items they will use. We also provide in-person support for purchasing some of the more personal products like nursing bras.

An increased access to information

Just as there are more and more products out there for new or expecting parents, there is also a wealth of information available – sometimes too much. We have seen a lot of parents using apps and reading blogs that might have inaccurate information, since many of these platforms are not regulated. For instance, these blogs don't account for the parents' medical and personal history. Because of this, we often see parents with a lot of anxiety and information overload. We find our in-person and virtual classes taught by professionals using unbiased, medically approved information brings our clients a lot of peace.

This has been a difficult year for everyone — especially expecting moms and new parents. People can't go out and attend classes and many hospitals have had to cancel their pregnancy courses. We have taken this as an opportunity to launch Motherhood Center into the next 20 years.

We now offer virtual educational courses and fitness classes. These classes are available to support parents anywhere — more information is available online. We are excited about the potential to expand our reach outside of Houston.

With The Motherhood Center celebrating its anniversary in May, we are so thankful we have been able to support Houston's mothers for 20 years, and we can't wait to see what the next 20 years hold.

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Gabriela Gerhart is the founder of The Motherhood Center.

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Greentown Labs names Lawson Gow as its new Houston leader

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Greentown Labs has named Lawson Gow as its Head of Houston.

Gow is the founder of The Cannon, a coworking space with seven locations in the Houston area, with additional partner spaces. He also recently served as managing partner at Houston-based investment and advisory firm Helium Capital. Gow is the son of David Gow, founder of Energy Capital's parent company, Gow Media.

According to Greentown, Gow will "enhance the founder experience, cultivate strategic partnerships, and accelerate climatetech solutions" in his new role.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join Greentown at this critical moment for the energy transition,” Gow said in a news release. “Greentown has a fantastic track record of supporting entrepreneurs in Houston, Boston, and beyond, and I am eager to keep advancing our mission in the energy transition capital of the world.”

Gow has also held analyst, strategy and advising roles since graduating from Rice University.

“We are thrilled to welcome Lawson to our leadership team,” Georgina Campbell Flatter, CEO of Greentown Labs, added in the release. “Lawson has spent his career building community and championing entrepreneurs, and we look forward to him deepening Greentown’s support of climate and energy startups as our Head of Houston.”

Gow is the latest addition to a series of new hires at Greentown Labs following a leadership shakeup.

Flatter was named as the organization's new CEO in February, replacing Kevin Dutt, Greentown’s interim CEO, who replaced Kevin Knobloch after he announced that he would step down in July 2024 after less than a year in the role.

Greentown also named Naheed Malik its new CFO in January.

Timmeko Moore Love was named the first Houston general manager and senior vice president of Greentown Labs. According to LinkedIn, she left the role in January.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston foundation grants $27M to support Texas chemistry research

fresh funding

Houston-based The Welch Foundation has doled out $27 million in its latest round of grants for chemical research, equipment and postdoctoral fellowships.

According to a June announcement, $25.5 million was allocated for the foundation's longstanding research grants, which provide $100,000 per year in funding for three years to full-time, regular tenure or tenure-track faculty members in Texas. The foundation made 85 grants to faculty at 16 Texas institutions for 2025, including:

  • Michael I. Jacobs, assistant professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department at Texas State University, who is investigating the structure and thermodynamics of intrinsically disordered proteins, which could "reveal clues about how life began," according to the foundation.
  • Kendra K. Frederick, assistant professor in the biophysics department at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who is studying a protein linked to Parkinson’s disease.
  • Jennifer S. Brodbelt, professor in chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, who is testing a theory called full replica symmetry breaking (fullRSB) on glass-like materials, which has implications for complex systems in physics, chemistry and biology.

Additional funding will be allocated to the Welch Postdoctoral Fellows of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. The program provides three-year fellowships to recent PhD graduates to support clinical research careers in Texas. Two fellows from Rice University and Baylor University will receive $100,000 annually for three years.

The Welch Foundation also issued $975,000 through its equipment grant program to 13 institutions to help them develop "richer laboratory experience(s)." The universities matched funds of $352,346.

Since 1954, the Welch Foundation has contributed over $1.1 billion for Texas-nurtured advancements in chemistry through research grants, endowed chairs and other chemistry-related ventures. Last year, the foundation granted more than $40.5 million in academic research grants, equipment grants and fellowships.

“Through funding basic chemical research, we are actively investing in the future of humankind,” Adam Kuspa, president of The Welch Foundation, said the news release. “We are proud to support so many talented researchers across Texas and continue to be inspired by the important work they complete every day.”

New Houston biotech co. developing capsules for hard-to-treat tumors

biotech breakthroughs

Houston company Sentinel BioTherapeutics has made promising headway in cancer immunotherapy for patients who don’t respond positively to more traditional treatments. New biotech venture creation studio RBL LLC (pronounced “rebel”) recently debuted the company at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago.

Rima Chakrabarti is a neurologist by training. Though she says she’s “passionate about treating the brain,” her greatest fervor currently lies in leading Sentinel as its CEO. Sentinel is RBL’s first clinical venture, and Chakrabarti also serves as cofounder and managing partner of the venture studio.

The team sees an opportunity to use cytokine interleukin-2 (IL-2) capsules to fight many solid tumors for which immunotherapy hasn't been effective in the past. “We plan to develop a pipeline of drugs that way,” Chakrabarti says.

This may all sound brand-new, but Sentinel’s research goes back years to the work of Omid Veiseh, director of the Rice Biotechnology Launch Pad (RBLP). Through another, now-defunct company called Avenge Bio, Veiseh and Paul Wotton — also with RBLP and now RBL’s CEO and chairman of Sentinel — invested close to $45 million in capital toward their promising discovery.

From preclinical data on studies in mice, Avenge was able to manufacture its platform focused on ovarian cancer treatments and test it on 14 human patients. “That's essentially opened the door to understanding the clinical efficacy of this drug as well as it's brought this to the attention of the FDA, such that now we're able to continue that conversation,” says Chakrabarti. She emphasizes the point that Avenge’s demise was not due to the science, but to the company's unsuccessful outsourcing to a Massachusetts management team.

“They hadn't analyzed a lot of the data that we got access to upon the acquisition,” explains Chakrabarti. “When we analyzed the data, we saw this dose-dependent immune activation, very specific upregulation of checkpoints on T cells. We came to understand how effective this agent could be as an immune priming agent in a way that Avenge Bio hadn't been developing this drug.”

Chakrabarti says that Sentinel’s phase II trials are coming soon. They’ll continue their previous work with ovarian cancer, but Chakrabarti says that she also believes that the IL-2 capsules will be effective in the treatment of endometrial cancer. There’s also potential for people with other cancers located in the peritoneal cavity, such as colorectal cancer, gastrointestinal cancer and even primary peritoneal carcinomatosis.

“We're delivering these capsules into the peritoneal cavity and seeing both the safety as well as the immune activation,” Chakrabarti says. “We're seeing that up-regulation of the checkpoint that I mentioned. We're seeing a strong safety signal. This drug was very well-tolerated by patients where IL-2 has always had a challenge in being a well-tolerated drug.”

When phase II will take place is up to the success of Sentinel’s fundraising push. What we do know is that it will be led by Amir Jazaeri at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Part of the goal this summer is also to create an automated cell manufacturing process and prove that Sentinel can store its product long-term.

“This isn’t just another cell therapy,” Chakrabarti says.

"Sentinel's cytokine factory platform is the breakthrough technology that we believe has the potential to define the next era of cancer treatment," adds Wotton.

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