Houston biotechnology companies looking for capital should be keeping their eyes on the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, where a Chicago-based biotech venture capital firm has targeted its latest expansion.
Portal Innovations will operate 30,000 square feet of lab and office space in the TMC3 Collaborative Building on the 37-acre Helix Park campus, the firm said June 21.
The Collaborative Building, which is part of the first phase of Helix Park set to open later in 2023, also will house TMC’s operations as well as lab space for three TMC member institutions: the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston.
In the June 21 announcement, Portal CEO John Flavin cited the institutions as resources that will help the firm with its Texas expansion.
“It’s critical for us to open in Texas and leverage nearby pipelines from Rice University, UTHealth Houston, Texas A&M, University of Houston, Baylor College of Medicine, and others across Houston’s innovative life sciences ecosystem,” Flavin said. “We’re thrilled to work with TMC to help grow tomorrow’s biotech and medtech leaders.”
TMC CEO William McKeon previously said the campus’ goal was to bring local academic connections closer to industry players. The addition of Portal also builds upon TMC’s work with its Venture Fund — which recently received a $50 million capital injection — and its BioBridge programs, which introduce foreign startups to the U.S. market.
“In Portal, we have a partner with a proven track record of leveraging venture capital funding, expert partners, and strong programming to support dynamic, entrepreneurial businesses at pivotal moments of their growth," McKeon said. “We look forward to building on our collective expertise and shared vision to further support the breakthroughs of early-stage life-science ventures.”
To achieve its goals of commercializing research, the TMC revised its covenants that prevent for-profit companies from operating on its grounds. The revisions allow Helix Park to bring such companies to the campus.
The TMC announced member institution Baylor College of Medicine as an anchor tenant for the campus’ Dynamic One industrial building in early 2023. Baylor will have 114,000 square feet of lab and office space. The Houston Business Journal, a sibling publication, reached out for comment on how much of Helix Park has been leased but did not receive a response before press time.
Portal’s Helix Park presence continues the firm’s expansion beyond Chicago. In March, Portal leased up to 58,000 square feet of lab space at the Boston Globe’s former headquarters, the Boston Business Journal reported.
Flavin launched Portal in March 2020 to build and scale early-stage biotechnology companies coming out of academic laboratories, corporations and innovation hubs. He founded Portal after his startup Pyxis Oncology relocated from Chicago to Boston due to lack of lab space, the Chicago Business Journal previously reported.
Multiple reports have noted Houston’s presence and development as a hub for life sciences. The Helix Park project was one of several Houston-area life-sciences infrastructure developments highlighted in a 2022 report from the nonprofit Center for Houston’s Future as evidence of the region’s growth.
Other emerging facilities include the TMC’s future 500-acre BioPort manufacturing campus and the nearby 53-acre Levit Green campus, which is being developed by Houston-based Hines and 2ML Real Estate Interests. Levit Green landed its first tenant, Sino Biological Inc., in 2022.
Meanwhile, a report from CBRE named Houston the top Texas market for life-sciences talent and No. 13 nationwide. The ranking considers such factors as concentration of life-sciences jobs and graduates into the field from local universities.
In April, a TMC-led coalition submitted a bid to the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, to bring a hub focused on clinical trials to Helix Park. If Houston is selected by ARPA-H, McKeon said the impact on the medical industry could be comparable to NASA’s impact on the space economy.
