Texas BioMed Archives - StartupsSanAntonio.com

Texas Biomed Levels Playing Field for Female Scientists

28Jul

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Texas Biomed Levels Playing Field for Female Scientists

The Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed), a global leader in infectious disease research, is taking concrete steps to level the uneven playing field for female scientists.Research has shown that diverse work teams lead to more impactful scientific studies. Yet, only one in three researchers in the world is a woman, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Add in the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on female scientists that have undone gender-equity gains from the past few decades, and it's clear there's still work to be done to ensure a level playing field for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research.The 2020 documentary “Picture a Scientist” depicted the "leaky pipeline" or significant drop in women holding post-doctoral research ...

Texas BioMed Hires Will Focus on Commercialization Strategy for Infectious Disease Research

5Aug

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Texas BioMed Hires Will Focus on Commercialization Strategy for Infectious Disease Research

The Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas BioMed) has grown its leadership team as part of a ten-year strategic plan launched in 2018 to position it as one of the world's top scientific centers focused on infectious diseases.Of its recent hiring announcements, two experts stand out for their focus on developing the nonprofit research organization's ability to commercialize its research discoveries for the market.Since early March, Cory Hallam, Ph.D., has been in the newly created position of vice president for business development and strategic alliances. He will also serve at the Institute as a professor of innovation management to help the faculty leverage commercialization pathways in getting research from the lab to the market.Hallam was the founding director of The Un...

UTSA-Led Collaborative Team Wins Grant to Develop a COVID-19 Vaccine

4May

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

UTSA-Led Collaborative Team Wins Grant to Develop a COVID-19 Vaccine

A consortium of scientists from San Antonio's four largest research institutions won a $200,000 grant to fund COVID-19 vaccine development. Dr. Karl Klose, director of the South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and professor of microbiology at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), leads the team. The presidents of UTSA, UT Health San Antonio, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) formed a new nonprofit in October 2019 called the San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics or SAPPT. The partnership funds researchers from the four institutions who work together on the interdisciplinary development of breakthrough therapies customized for patients. Soon after the City of San Antonio announced pandemic res...

Enventure San Antonio To Connect Bioscience Students to Entrepreneurial Opportunities

16Dec

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Enventure San Antonio To Connect Bioscience Students to Entrepreneurial Opportunities

Bioscience graduate students face daunting odds at landing a tenure-track faculty position in academia. In popular fields like biomedicine, fewer than one in six has a chance at a faculty job researching at a university.What options does an early-career bioscience professional have?A new nonprofit organization, launched by biomedical students facing these challenges themselves, want to help enterprising scientists find career options so they can pursue medical innovation in San Antonio’s private sector.Enventure San Antonio (Enventure SA) is a biomedical entrepreneurial community designed to help students and young professionals become leaders in the biomedical and health technology space.Students and young professionals often lack the education and experience to commercia...

New Precision Therapeutics Partnership to Highlight San Antonio’s Unique Bioscience Capabilities

15Oct

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

New Precision Therapeutics Partnership to Highlight San Antonio’s Unique Bioscience Capabilities

Tuesday's announcement of a new major collaborative initiative focused on San Antonio's unique strengths in precision therapeutics will help boost the city's biomedical capability for innovation in healthcare. The presidents of San Antonio’s four largest research institutions announced Tuesday they are collectively funding the new nonprofit San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics or SAPPT with $800,000 from UT Health San Antonio, the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed), The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). This groundbreaking initiative will fund researchers working collaboratively across the four institutions, serving as a model for interdisciplinary development of breakthrough therapies customized for each pa...

Texas BioMed Researcher Develops Improved TB Test for Use in Developing Countries

30May

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Texas BioMed Researcher Develops Improved TB Test for Use in Developing Countries

The world's deadliest infectious disease is more common than you think. Tuberculosis, or TB, kills 1.6 million people every year and is one of the top 10 causes of death globally. Over 95 percent of cases and deaths are in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas BioMed) researcher Jordi Torrelles, Ph.D. knows these numbers well — he specializes in tuberculosis research. He developed a TB test that has been adapted for the challenging conditions typically encountered when diagnosing TB in developing countries.Torrelles traveled to Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa in early 2019 to put into place research collaborations for testing a cheaper, faster, easier way to diagnose TB. The low-tech, low-cost test w...

San Antonio’s Healthcare and Bioscience Industry Tops $40 Billion in Economic Impact for 2017

13Nov

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

San Antonio’s Healthcare and Bioscience Industry Tops $40 Billion in Economic Impact for 2017

The San Antonio Chamber of Commerce 2018 Healthcare and Bioscience Economic Impact Study is based on 2017 data, according to the study authors economist Richard Butler, Ph.D., and health care administration professor Mary E. Stefl, Ph.D., both from Trinity University. The study completed in 2018 stated its conservative estimate of over $30 billion in impact on San Antonio's economy in 2017. The authors included a more comprehensive analysis of economic impact with data from UT Health San Antonio, Baylor College of Medicine at the Children's Hospital of San Antonio, and some military medical presence in San Antonio. The overall impact rises to more than $40 billion when the comprehensive data is taken into account.This sector employs over 18 percent of San Antonio's population, with...

Texas Biomed Plugs Holes in ‘Leaky Pipeline’ for Female Scientists

4Sep

By Guest AuthorNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Texas Biomed Plugs Holes in ‘Leaky Pipeline’ for Female Scientists

Why are women leaving science? More than half of life and biomedical sciences graduate students are women, yet the latest data from the National Academies reveal only 16 percent of women go on to become full professors in the life sciences, for example.Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) recognized this leaky pipeline for female scientists and is working to attract and retain more women in biomedical research. Workforce diversity is a core value in Texas Biomed’s new ten-year strategic plan which goes into effect in September. Texas Biomed is launching efforts to nearly double its workforce and position it as one of the world's top scientific centers focused on infectious diseases, according to Texas Biomed assistant vice president of communications Lisa Cruz. Texas Biom...

Texas BioMed Discovers Class of Antibodies That Block HIV Transmission

24Jul

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Texas BioMed Discovers Class of Antibodies That Block HIV Transmission

Researchers from the San Antonio-based Texas Biomedical Research Institute have discovered a new defense against HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. The group of Texas BioMed scientists led by Ruth Ruprecht, M.D., Ph.D., used an animal model to show for the first time that an antibody called Immunoglobulin M (IgM) was effective in preventing infection after mucosal AIDS virus exposure.Only certain body fluids from a person infected with HIV can transmit the virus. Infection occurs after fluids such as blood, semen, pre-seminal fluid, rectal fluids, vaginal fluids, or breast milk come in contact with a person's mucous membrane or damaged tissue or is directly injected into the bloodstream using a needle or syringe. Worldwide, an estimated 90% of new cases of HIV-1 are caused by exposure ...

Texas BioMed Explores Malaria in Latest Podcast

12Feb

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Sponsored Post

Texas BioMed Explores Malaria in Latest Podcast

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year. Texas Biomed's own scientist Ian Cheeseman, Ph.D., and his team at specialize in the genetics of the parasite that causes malaria. Listen to Texas BioMed's latest podcast episode 2, Much Ado About Malaria, from TXBiobytes. His newest study published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution was recently highlighted in the Editors Choice section of the prestigious journal Science. “At the basic level we simply do not know what’s in a malaria infection, even though this has profound implications for how we think about treating and eradicating this disease,” Cheeseman said. Using various technologies, these scientists are literally cracking open cells and using single cell DNA seq...