Houston initiative receives $4M grant to promote biomedical entrepreneurship

fresh funding

The grant will create a new Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub, known as REACH, in Houston. Photo via Getty Images

The National Institute of Health has awarded a $4 million grant to a Houston-area initiative in the name of sparking biomedical activity.

The grant will create a new Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub, known as REACH, in Houston. The team behind the Gulf Coast Consortium — one of the world’s largest inter-institutional cooperatives, which includes eight of Houston’s medical research leading lights — has been hard at work to bring REACH-GCC to fruition.

The result? A multidisciplinary means of promoting biomedical entrepreneurship, bringing innovators from concept to commercialization.

“I can tell you that a lot of those potential users came out of our research consortium. Those users span from a focus on mental health to antibiotic resistance to regenerative medicine to pain management to, of course, cancer,” says Suzanne Tomlinson of Rice University.

Tomlinson is the director of GCC research programs and worked with Stan Watowich of The University of Texas Medical Branch to create the grant. Peter Davies helped to submit it through Texas A&M University.

One of the dozen research and educational programs that Tomlinson directs is the Innovative Drug Discovery and Development Consortium.

“Within that, we have established a wide network of drug to drug discovery and development cores,” she says.

The vast majority of those are funded by CPRIT (Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas), and Tomlinson and Watowich (the chair of IDDD’s steering committee) were lead developers and authors of the grant to create TMCi’s Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics (ACT). That accelerator is a model for what GCC-REACH may do for taking other innovations from discovery to market.

“We get close to a billion dollars in research monies a year coming into the Medical Center. The question is, ‘Are we seeing a lot of those dollars resulting in products that benefit patients?’ And the answer always is, ‘We can do better,’” says Watowich.

How will GCC-REACH help to do that? By combining the forces of all eight full members of the GCC, plus outside help when it’s needed. Watowich sets for the example of a budding entrepreneur at his home institution, UTMB. That researcher could potentially receive guidance from an MD Anderson expert in immunotherapies or a Rice scientist who focuses on nanotechnology delivery systems.

“This grant is designed to put together a bespoke team of whatever is needed to have a discussion with and figure out what's the market for this technology. How might it get there?’” says Watowich.

Those options could include setting up a startup company, but could also mean licensing the idea to someone else, whether it’s a company or an institution.

“Our goal is, we help each other. We help ourselves. We help the patient population. And we do that through working together,” he continues.

Though it sounds like GCC-REACH could be a competitor to other accelerators, Watowich doesn’t see it that way. He sees the new hub as working with very early-stage creators who may still take part in those existing accelerators in the future. And the team hopes to do so quickly. The goal is to launch this month. Watowich says that the plan is to use the NIH’s $4 million to launch around 60 early stage biomedical companies over the next four years.

A variety of nascent founders — regardless of their type of innovative solution — will take part in the initiative.

“It can be a device, it could be an AI, it could be an app, it could be digital health, it could be therapeutics,” says Watowich. “We have experts across all of these areas that could help provide guidance and mentoring to try to move those companies forward.”

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5 Houston-area companies named among world's most innovative for 2026

In The Spotlight

Led by Conroe-based Hertha Metals, five organizations in the Houston area earned praise on Fast Company’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2026.

Hertha Metals ranked No. 1 in the manufacturing category.

Last year, Hertha unveiled a single-step process for steelmaking that it says is cheaper, more energy-efficient and just as scalable as traditional steel manufacturing. It started testing the process in 2024 at a one-metric-ton-per-day pilot plant.

At the same time, Hertha announced more than $17 million in venture capital funding from investors such as Breakthrough Energy, Clean Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Pear VC.

“We’re not just reinventing steelmaking; we’re redefining what’s possible in materials, manufacturing, and national resilience,” Laureen Meroueh, founder and CEO of Hertha, said at the time.

Meroueh was also recently named to Inc. Magazine's 2026 Female Founders 500 list.

Hertha, founded in 2022, says traditional steelmaking relies on an outdated, coal-based multistep process that is costly, and contributes up to 9 percent of industrial energy use and 10 percent of global carbon emissions.

By contrast, Hertha’s method converts low-grade iron ore into molten steel or high-purity iron in one step. The company says its process is 30 percent more energy-efficient than traditional steelmaking and costs less than producing steel in China.

Last year, Hertha said it planned to break ground in 2026 on a plant capable of producing more than 9,000 metric tons of steel per year. In its next phase, the company plans to operate at 500,000 metric tons of steel production per year.

Here are Fast Company’s rankings for the four other Houston-area organizations:

  • Houston-based Vaulted Deep, No. 3 in catchall “other” category.
  • XGS Energy, No. 7 in the energy category. XGS’ proprietary solid-state geothermal system uses thermally conductive materials to deliver affordable energy anywhere hot rock is located. While Fast Company lists Houston as XGS’ headquarters, and the company has a major presence in the city, XGS is based in Palo Alto, California.
  • Houston-based residential real estate brokerage Epique Realty, No. 10 in the business services category. Epique, which bills itself as the industry’s first AI brokerage, provides a free AI toolkit for real estate agents to enhance marketing, streamline content creation, and improve engagement with clients and prospects.
  • Texas A&M University’s Nanostructured Materials Lab in College Station. The lab studies nano-structured materials to make materials lighter for the aerospace industry, improve energy storage, and enable the creation of “smart” textiles.
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This article first appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

UH lands $11.8M for first-of-its-kind early language development study

speech funding

Researchers at the University of Houston have secured an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of early language development.

Led by Elena Grigorenko, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and research professor Jack Fletcher, the study will follow 3,600 children aged 18 to 24 months to uncover how language skills develop at this critical stage and why some children experience delays that can influence later growth.

The NIH funding will also support the development of the new national Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders at UH, which aims to bring experts from psychology, education, health and measurement sciences to study how children learn language.

“This will be the first national study to estimate how common late talking is using a large, representative sample of Houston toddlers,” Grigorenko said in a news release. “By following these children as they grow, we hope to better understand the developmental pathways that can lead to conditions such as developmental language disorder and autism.”

UH’s team will partner with the pediatric clinic network at Texas Children’s Hospital, where children will be screened for early language development, allowing researchers to identify those who show signs of delayed speech. Next, researchers will follow the cohort through early childhood to examine how language abilities evolve and how early delays may lead to later challenges.

The Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders will be the 14th national research center established at UH, and will include researchers from multiple UH departments, as well as partners at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Center for Learning Disorders.

“This level of investment from the National Institutes of Health reflects the significance of this work to address a complex challenge affecting children, families and communities,” Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH, said in a news release. “By bringing together experts from multiple disciplines and partnering with major health systems across the region, the project reflects our commitment to advancing discoveries that impact our community.”

Rice Alliance names Houston healthtech exec as first head of platform

new hire

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named its first head of platform.

Houston entrepreneur Laura Neder stepped into the newly created role last month, according to an email from Rice Alliance. Neder will focus on building and growing Houston’s Venture Advantage Platform.

The emerging platform, which is being promoted by Rice Alliance and the Ion, aims to connect founders with the "people, capital and expertise they need to scale."

"I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it takes to make an innovation ecosystem more navigable, more connected, and more useful for founders," Neder said in a LinkedIn post. "I’m grateful for the opportunity to do that work at Rice Alliance, alongside a team with a long history of supporting entrepreneurship and innovation."

"Houston has the talent, institutions, and industry base to create real advantage for founders," she added. "I’m looking forward to listening, learning, and building stronger pathways across the ecosystem."

Neder most recently served as CEO of Houston-based Careset, where she helped bring the Medicare data startup to commercialization. Prior to that, Neder served as COO of Houston-based telemedicine startup 2nd.MD, which was acquired for $460 million by Accolade in 2021.

"Laura brings a rare combination of founder empathy, operational experience and ecosystem leadership," Rice Alliance shared.

Neder and Rice Alliance also shared that the organization is hiring developers to design the new Venture Advantage Platform. Learn more here.

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