Houston — Johnson & Johnson Innovation’s newest JLabs incubator opens in Houston today with a class of 21 resident biotech companies pursuing innovation in health IT, medical devices, and drugs.
Called “JLABS @ TMC,” the facility is located within the Texas Medical Center’s Innovation Institute, which includes TMCx, the medical center’s life sciences accelerator. AT&T (NYSE: [[ticker:T]]) is also planning on opening its latest Foundry at the TMC campus, designed to boost health IT innovation.
The idea, executives say, is to create a “think-tank” style of environment to encourage collaboration among JLabs and TMCx companies, as well as with mentors, investors, and hospital executives in Houston.
“The city’s rich research, academic, and investment communities provide a robust ecosystem of early-stage innovation,” said Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer and worldwide chairman of its pharmaceuticals business, in a press release.
About half of the Houston JLabs companies are from Houston, with others coming to the city from Canada, South Korea, and Austin, TX. The facility can accommodate up to 50 companies, JLabs says.
The Houston site is the first JLabs to open with a medical device prototype lab, a 3-D printer, and what J&J (NYSE: [[ticker:JNJ]]) calls “skills-building programs to design and develop smart health technologies.”
The Houston facility joins a network of JLabs spaces located in San Diego, San Francisco, South San Francisco, Boston, and Toronto, which will open this spring. In total, they house about 100 early-stage companies in biotech/pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer, and digital health programs.
Here are the JLabs resident companies in Houston:
