Houston health tech startup scores $2.5M SBIR grant to advance unique cell therapy AI technology

fresh funding

CellChorus created a visualization AI program that helps scientists to better understand the functioning of cells, including their activation, killing and movement. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston biotech company just announced a new award of $2.5 million.

CellChorus, a spinoff of the Single Cell Lab at the University of Houston, announced the fresh funding, which comes from an SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) through its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

CellChorus is the business behind a technology called TIMING, which stands for Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids. It’s a visualization AI program that helps scientists to better understand the functioning of cells, including their activation, killing and movement. This more in-depth knowledge of immune cells could be instrumental in developing novel therapies in countless disorders, including cancers and infectious diseases.

“While many cell therapies have been approved and are in development, the industry needs an integrated analytical platform that provides a matrix of functional readouts, including cell phenotype and metabolism on the same cells over time,” Rebecca Berdeaux, vice president of science at CellChorus, says in a press release. “We are grateful to NCATS for its support of the development of application-specific kits that apply dynamic, functional single-cell analysis of immune cell phenotype and function. The product we will develop will increase the impact of these therapies to improve the lives of patients.”

A two-year, $2.1 million Phase II grant will begin after the company achieves predetermined milestones under a $350,000 Phase I grant that is currently taking place. As Berdeaux explained, the funds will be used to develop TIMING kits which will manufacture analytics that provide end-users with rapid, specific and predictive results to accelerate translational research and the development and manufacture of more effective cell therapies.

TIMING is more than a great idea whose time has yet to come. It has already been proven in great depth. In fact, last June, CellChorus CEO Daniel Meyer told InnovationMap that he was initially attracted to the technology because it was “very well validated.” At the time, CellChorus had just announced a $2.3 million SBIR Fast-Track grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The company also went on to win an award in the Life Science category of the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards.

That confirmation of success comes from more than 200 peer-reviewed papers that describe myriad cell types and types of therapy, all of which used data from TIMING assays. TIMING data has benefited industry leaders in everything from research and clinical development to manufacturing. With the new grant, TIMING will become more widely available to scientists making important discoveries relating to the inner workings of the cells that drive our immunity.

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Houston cell therapy company launches second-phase clinical trial

fighting cancer

A Houston cell therapy company has dosed its first patient in a Phase 2 clinical trial. March Biosciences is testing the efficacy of MB-105, a CD5-targeted CAR-T cell therapy for patients with relapsed or refractory CD5-positive T-cell lymphoma.

Last year, InnovationMap reported that March Biosciences had closed its series A with a $28.4 million raise. Now, the company, co-founded by Sarah Hein, Max Mamonkin and Malcolm Brenner, is ready to enroll a total of 46 patients in its study of people with difficult-to-treat cancer.

The trial will be conducted at cancer centers around the United States, but the first dose took place locally, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Swaminathan P. Iyer, a professor in the department of lymphoma/myeloma at MD Anderson, is leading the trial.

“This represents a significant milestone in advancing MB-105 as a potential treatment option for patients with T-cell lymphoma who currently face extremely limited therapeutic choices,” Hein, who serves as CEO, says. “CAR-T therapies have revolutionized the treatment of B-cell lymphomas and leukemias but have not successfully addressed the rarer T-cell lymphomas and leukemias. We are optimistic that this larger trial will further validate MB-105's potential to address the critical unmet needs of these patients and look forward to reporting our first clinical readouts.”

The Phase 1 trial showed promise for MB-105 in terms of both safety and efficacy. That means that potentially concerning side effects, including neurological events and cytokine release above grade 3, were not observed. Those results were published last year, noting lasting remissions.

In January 2025, MB-105 won an orphan drug designation from the FDA. That results in seven years of market exclusivity if the drug is approved, as well as development incentives along the way.

The trial is enrolling its single-arm, two-stage study on ClinicalTrials.gov. For patients with stubborn blood cancers, the drug is providing new hope.

Texas-based 'DoorDash for laundry' startup tumbles into Houston market

No Scrubs

Laundry may seem like an endless task that piles up, but a new service offers a solution to overwhelmed Houston families.

NoScrubs, an Austin-based home laundry pickup service has just expanded to Houston. Described by the company as "DoorDash — but for laundry," they wash customer's clothes at local laundromats and return them the same day, folded and ready to be put away.

The service took off like gangbusters in Austin, making an expansion to the state's largest city an obvious choice. It's not universal coverage just yet.

For now, only the following ZIP codes have NoScrubs service available: 77002, 77004, 77005, 77006, 77007, 77008, 77009, 77010, 77018, 77019, 77024, 77025, 77027, 77046, 77056, 77057, 77081, 77098, 77401, 77030, 77003.

A single pickup starts at $40 for 20 pounds of laundry, while the basic monthly subscription is $60 for two pickups. All services use hypoallergenic detergents.

The average American family spends about 240 hours a year on laundry, making it a very time-consuming chore. For people with disabilities, difficult work schedules, and other circumstances, it can be a real help, says co-founder Matt O'Connor.

"Some of our favorite customer stories simply revolve around saving people time when they have something challenging going on," he writes in an email. "For example, one customer reviewed NoScrubs saying 'So happy I could cry! (Partially because I'm pregnant and my emotions are heightened!)...1000% recommend if you have time restrictions or physical restrictions! ' So, whether it’s saving time, the affordability, or the pleasantly surprising turnaround time, NoScrubs has a variety of benefits for any customer."

NoScrubs is also a new opportunity for Houston's gig workers. Because there are no passengers, it can be a safer alternative to driving ride share for women and other people apprehensive about having strangers in their cars. As NoScrubs partners with local laundromats, drivers are also going to centralized locations rather than all over the map, leading to less wear and tear on their cars. The laundromats benefit as well, since NoScrubs loads are ones that would otherwise be done at home.

"Our model makes driving a tiny fraction of the time, so folks who don’t want to wear down their vehicles and spend a ton on gas love working at NoScrubs," added O'Connor.

Here's what's next for Houston’s Tempest Droneworx after SXSW Speed Pitch win

winner, winner

It’s not easy to be a standout at South by Southwest, especially during SXSW Interactive, which is the subsection of the festival that focuses on new media, technology and entrepreneurship.

But it’s even more difficult to win at SXSW Pitch, the competition for startups and entrepreneurs that showcases innovative new technology to a panel of industry experts, high-profile media professionals, venture capital investor, and angel investors.

Tempest Droneworx, a Houston-based company that provides real-time intelligence collected through drones, robots and sensors, did just that last month, taking home the Best Speed Pitch award. It was also named a finalist and alternate in the full SXSW Pitch competition. The company is known for it flagship product, Harbinger, a software solution that agnostically gathers data at virtually any scale and presents that data in easy-to-understand visualizations using a video game engine.

Tempest CEO and founder Ty Audronis says his company won based on its merits and the impact it’s making and will make on the world. Audronis founded the company after his hometown of Paradise, California, was destroyed by a wildfire in 2018.

“(SXSW) was a huge moment for our team,” says Audronis, whose background is in science visualization, data visualization and visual effects for the movie industry. “This is about what everyone at Tempest Droneworx has created, and our mission to make sure that issues—like the one that befell Paradise, California, my hometown, and the inspiration for our Harbinger software—don’t become the full-blown (disasters)."

Audronis shares that the company is working to release an agriculture beta this summer and is raising a Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) round through the AFWERX, the Department of the Air Force’s innovation arm.

Tempest’s Harbinger is impressing investors and clients alike, but what is it exactly and what does it do?

The best way to explain the solution is in how it’s redefining the agriculture space. Tempest has deployed the product at Grand Farm in North Dakota, an agtech operation that seeks to promote sustainable, climate-resilient farming using applied technology.

“We decided to go down the road of agriculture,” Audronis says. “We're currently installed at the Grand Farm in North Dakota, which is a farm that is very closely tied to Microsoft. They do third-party verification of new soils and fertilizers, and we are helping them with visualizing the data that they're getting from their sensors.”

Additionally, Audronis and his co-founder and wife, Dana Abramovitz, spearhead a pilot program at Doubting Thomas Farms, an organic farm in Minnesota, where the company has installed 22 in-ground sensors that can measure volatile organic emissions.

To further optimize their solutions approach, Tempest Droneworx will also train artificial intelligence to look for overspray from neighboring non-organic farms. This will help maintain organic certification and reduce insurance claims for lost crops.

“This will save Doubting Thomas Farms and other organic farms a boatload of cash,” Audronis says.

During an exclusive tour with InnovationMap, Audronis pulled up a live feed of sensors buried around the Minnesota farm up on the conference room display. The feed did, in fact, look like a video game, with the sensors giving real-time data about the farm’s temperature, moisture level, humidity, CO2 and nitrogen.

Harbinger will collect, extract and extrapolate all of the data and later provide a digital almanac for farmers to track the history of their crops.

As the office tour continued, Audronis pointed out the company’s expanding partnership with the U.S. Military.

As a retired U.S. Navy veteran with over two decades of experience designing, building and piloting drones, Audronis understands that Harbinger has multiple military applications that will ultimately save lives—a core tenet of his company’s mission.

The company has launched a robotic dog known as UBU, developed by Tempest partner Ghost Robotics, that enables faster, more accurate ground surveys for explosive devices. This task previously required multiple airmen and hours to complete, Audronis says.

With agriculture and military initiatives in progress and making an impact, Audronis hopes to one day bring his original vision for Tempest Droneworx and Harbinger full circle by getting the call to combat California’s next catastrophic wildfire.

“We're proving our technology in military and in agriculture right now,” Audronis says. “Eventually, I would like to still save some lives with wildfire. That's really the purpose of the company … Whether it's agriculture, smart cities, the bottom line is saving lives through real-time situational awareness."

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