Johnson & Johnson Innovation, the investment unit of healthcare company Johnson & Johnson, opened a JLabs incubator at Texas Medical Centre (TMC) yesterday.
Johnson & Johnson Innovation has also formed an agreement with PerkinElmer through which it will offer instruments, training, software, lab services and on-site technical support.
JLabs@TMC is the fifth location for the incubator network in the US. Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen operates a sixth branch in Canada, first announced in September 2015.
The facility at TMC, the world’s largest medical centre, will be able to accommodate up to 50 life sciences startups across its 34,000-square foot space, though the incubator will launch with a smaller cohort of 21 companies. The TMC location is the first to offer a medical device prototyping lab.
The selected startups are the winners of JLabs’ Quick Fire Challenge, and include businesses developing cancer therapies, such as Beta Cat Pharmaceuticals and Immunophotonics, and Innovate Wireless Health, which is creating a platform to help healthcare providers manage patients suffering from chronic conditions.
JLabs’ other US locations are in San Diego, San Francisco, South San Francisco and Boston.
Melinda Richter, head of JLabs, said: “Houston is already a very active life sciences hub, and we have recently seen a drive to further embrace the industry, establish clear leadership in biotech innovation and close the gap between research and commercialisation.
“JLabs is ideally suited to catalyse this result, not only through supporting the development of new healthcare solutions for patients, but also by providing startups with access to the broader JLabs network and its family of incubators.”