The Texas Medical Center, based in Houston, has launched TMC Venture Fund, a $25 million initiative designed to support early-stage companies developing technologies in the healthcare space.
Texas Medical Center leaders said the venture fund aims to nurture healthcare technology startups to flourish in Houston’s health care ecosystem and further the TMC’s mission to advance health, education and research.
“The TMC Venture Fund is a quintessential example of the Texas Medical Center’s ongoing commitment to driving collaboration across our medical city and further establishing Texas as the third coast of life sciences in the United States,” Bill McKeon, Texas Medical Center president and CEO, said in a statement.
The TMC Venture Fund Investment Committee is comprised of Chair Bill McKeon, Texas Medical Center President and CEO; Barbara Bass, M.D., Houston Methodist Hospital; Juliana Garaizar, Houston Angel Network; Erik Halvorsen, Ph.D., TMC Innovation Institute; Bernard A. Harris, Jr., M.D., Vesalius Ventures; Chester J. Koh, M.D., Texas Children’s Hospital; Adam Kuspa, Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine; Larry Lawson, GOOSE Society; Tom Luby, Ph.D., JLABS @ TMC; and Ferran Prat, Ph.D., J.D., MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The TMC Venture Fund will help accomplish one of the key tenets of the Texas Medical Center Strategic Plan by transforming innovative ideas into tangible solutions for improving heath, health system leaders said. The fund will provide monetary resources to young startups in the health care space with a nexus to Houston and the Texas Medical Center.
The TMC Venture Fund Investment Committee has selected the following 2017 recipients:
ALLEVIANT: Alleviant Medical is focused on developing a novel minimally-invasive device to treat congestive heart failure. Their proprietary technology is designed to relieve heart failure symptoms, improve quality of life and reduce hospital admissions for more than 16 million patients currently suffering from this disease in the U.S. and abroad.
BRITESEED: Briteseed is commercializing a new class of smart surgical tools that have artificial-vision assistance to help surgeons quickly identify landmarks and safely navigate vital structures. These multifunctional tools have the benefit of cautery, dissection and optical tissue sensing in a single package.
CNSDOSE: CNSDose uses advanced genetic technology to fast-track finding the right antidepressant and dose. Genetically guided prescribing via CNSDose results in a 2.5 times greater likelihood of remission, which means faster recovery, reducing suffering and cutting costs that result from trial-and-error prescribing.
MEDABLE: Medable is transforming health care by providing an enterprise platform for “Direct-to-Patient” clinical care and clinical trials, enabling patient-generated data to drive health care delivery, research and personalized and predictive medicine.
NONINVASIX: To reduce the incidence of neonatal mortality and morbidity, Noninvasix is developing a patient monitor to directly, accurately and noninvasively measure brain oxygenation in premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. Real-time brain oxygenation monitoring will allow doctors to intervene before neurological function is permanently compromised.
