The YMCA of Greater Houston has launched a virtual platform called HTX+. Image via HTXplus.org

It started with a Zoom class. Shelby Saylor remembers shutting the doors to the YMCA of Greater Houston on March 17, 2020, as the threat of the coronavirus pandemic surged across the city. Like the rest of the world, the executive director of healthy living had no idea when the YMCA would reopen to its community.

"How do we reach our friends and our community in a time where they are isolated and maybe a little lost?" asked Saylor.

Using a webcam, the staff at YMCA of Greater Houston began recording videos and supportive content for members within the early days of the pandemic.

"We were more concerned with getting a product out there because it was needed, and then we iterated for quality," she says.

Over time, the concept of digital programming evolved into HTX+, the YMCA of Greater Houston's new on-demand virtual platform with fitness and wellness courses and resources for all ages.

The platform has emerged at a time when digital resources have become a necessity for people to work and live. The YMCA has been a long-held bastion of community outreach, making its resources accessible to all and working to eradicate inequalities. The virtual service emerged as a solution for addressing food insecurity, racial inequities, health disparities, social isolation, and learning gaps from afar.

"It was a two-pronged process," explains Shelby. "We had to serve the immediate needs...so we looked at the gaps in our communities as well as the gaps from closing out brick-and-mortar for a period of time," she says.

From there, the YMCA answered another question: "What gaps can we fill once we are at 100 percent capacity?"

"People are going to come back at different levels," says Saylor. She describes her own uneasiness going into a crowded grocery store and feeling her heart race. "It's going to take some time [for people] to unlearn some of that social isolation," she anticipates.

HTX+ includes fitness, mindfulness, virtual personal training, and educational resources members can access from anywhere. Saylor feels the platform, available on the Houston YMCA app and online, will help enhance the Y experience even after the pandemic. She notes the interactive platform can supplement members' in-person workouts and also provide the connection to those who are not yet comfortable returning to the facility.

"It has tremendously grown with webinars where you can ask questions and be a part of more than just the content that we're all used to consuming right now," she says.

One offering that has helped members at the YMCA handle the onslaught of pandemic stress is meditations. Saylor, who says she typically prefers to be behind the camera, was proud to step out of her comfort zone to teach a midday meditation.

Programs targeted to different age groups, from children to seniors, have helped provide resources and tools to two generations with unique needs.

"I'm really proud of our ability to find stuff for younger members because there is just not that much out there," she says. The HTX Kids program has evolved to include STEM activities, sports, crafts, and learning. "Seeing all come to fruition from one Zoom video to where it is now—I couldn't be more proud," she continued.

YMCA Virtual Personal Trainingwww.youtube.com

ForeverWell, a program for members ages 55 and up, has also expanded digital opportunities to members.

"We focus on things that maybe younger communities don't have to tackle beyond your social isolation but as well as activities of daily living, balance and things they can do that will improve how they can move around, stay healthy, and stay connected," says Saylor.

The YMCA's mission to provide health equity also helps communities that are disproportionately impacted by disasters like the pandemic and recent winter storm. The organization has set up food drives and even put warming centers in place during Winter Storm Uri.

"That's what makes us not a gym. We're going to open our facility for you to come and get a hot shower, unlike a big box gym. We're going to do that because it's not about fitness; it's about making sure basic needs are met," says Saylor.

Saylor knows that communities of color as well as the senior population, who may be on a restricted income, can benefit from the tool.

"It really helps them become stronger, healthier, and attach to something. That connectedness is worth its weight in gold," she says.

The YMCA of Greater Houston adds content to HTX+ on a weekly basis, and Saylor says programming will continue to grow long after the pandemic.

"Now that people have been exposed and have integrated digital into their life, regardless of when the pandemic ends, I believe that will always be a part of our new way of life," she says.

"Digital is never final. It's going to take our whole team and our whole community to work together to continue to meet those digital needs because it's not going anywhere," she continues.

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Greentown Labs names Lawson Gow as its new Houston leader

head of hou

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.