Photo: Brett Coomer, Staff

Anna Cole, left, and Charlotte Rivas work in the lab at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Anna Cole, left, and Charlotte Rivas work in the lab at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Research assistant Markia Smith works in the lab at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Research assistant Markia Smith works in the lab at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Graduate student Suite ASukumaran works in the lab at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Graduate student Suite ASukumaran works in the lab at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Student researcher Moriah Chermak works in the lab at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Student researcher Moriah Chermak works in the lab at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Manik Kuvalekar works in the lab at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Manik Kuvalekar works in the lab at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Cell samples are prepared at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Cell samples are prepared at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Student researcher Moriah Chermak works in the lab, counting cells, at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Student researcher Moriah Chermak works in the lab, counting cells, at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Student researcher Moriah Chermak works in the lab, counting cells, at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Student researcher Moriah Chermak works in the lab, counting cells, at Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Hospital on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle )

Life-saving treatment shows why Houston needs medical-startup ecosystem

Imagine completing a difficult transplant only to acquire a viral infection that fills your bladder with blood and causes abdominal pain.

Such infections are common among patients with suppressed immune systems, and until recently, doctors could do little about them. But a Houston-based startup will soon supply hundreds of transplant patients across the country with a new immunotherapy treatment for these potentially deadly infections, ameliorating suffering and saving millions in medical costs.

ViraCyte's T-cell therapy has shown amazing promise with five viruses and could potentially treat many more. But getting this revolutionary product from the lab to doctors outside Houston reveals the importance of creating an ecosystem that nurtures companies like ViraCyte and shows how a stronger system is needed in Houston.

The basic research that led to ViraCyte began more than 20 years ago with funding from the National Institutes of Health, said Ann Leen, an immunology professor at Baylor College of Medicine and the chief scientific officer at ViraCyte. Since then, researchers have worked to harness the body's natural defense system against viral infections, focusing primarily on those that afflict vulnerable transplant patients.

"What we've been doing in the lab is figuring out where this cell therapy could work, against what viruses, and figuring out how healthy people control different viruses," Leen said. "And then figuring out how can we create an immune response in the lab."

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A healthy person's immune system has cells that fight viruses. ViraCyte identifies the parts of a virus that trigger these protective cells to act. They then mix those bits with parts of a healthy person's blood to grow protective cells in the lab.

"It's almost like gardening," Leen said.

A few years ago, researchers could grow protective cells in three months to help one person fight one virus. That kind of research is typically done at research centers like Baylor College of Medicine using state, federal and private grant money.

But a three-month process to help a single person with a single virus is not commercially viable. Leen knew she needed to develop an off-the-shelf, easy-to-manufacture therapy that could help almost any patient. Coming up with a commercial therapy, though, is beyond the purview of academia, and many promising ideas never make it past this stage because researchers don't have the financial support, the expertise or the business knowledge to form a company.

"We can accommodate our own patients, and we've done that for many years, but there are many patients across the country and worldwide," Leen said. "It's hard to get funding to continue to provide that to patients because there is little research to do. We had to move to the next stage."

That's when Leen and her co-founders started ViraCyte. Using their own money, and with help from family and friends, Leen and her team applied for more grant funding and applied to business incubators to help build a company and to offer a commercial therapy.

JLABS, a medical technology incubator in the Texas Medical Center sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, accepted ViraCyte, offering office and laboratory space as well as business advice.

"It was important to be in the Medical Center, but to have a separate footprint outside of academia," Leen said. "Before JLABS, there were not a lot of options within the Medical Center."

ViraCyte has made major strides and licensed the intellectual property from Baylor. The company has developed Viralym-M, an off-the-shelf treatment that can help almost all transplant patients fight the five most common viruses that infect them.

The company is moving Viralym-M into Phase III clinical studies at health centers across the U.S., the most crucial step in the Food and Drug Administration approval process. Dr. Bilal Omer, a pediatric oncologist at the Baylor College of Medicine who led the successful Phase II study, said the treatment is already savings lives.

"For the first time, we have a treatment where you can go to a freezer, take out some cells, you infuse these cells, and the patient often improves within a few days. Sometimes within a week the patient is back to baseline, feeling good," he said. "I'm getting daily emails from all over the country asking if they can get these cells."

Meanwhile, ViraCyte has reduced the cost of growing the cells to $100,000 for 300 doses. While expensive, the therapy is cheaper than patients spending weeks or months in the hospital at $8,000 a day. Despite the progress, the company will need to raise money for commercial production and to develop cells to treat more viruses, such as HIV, hepatitis or even Zika.

"We've started looking at new targets," Leen said.

ViraCyte could not have happened without financial backers, professional advisers and JLABS, Leen said, but Medical Center researchers still need more such programs that help researchers turn their ideas into companies, and that means more investments and business expertise.

"There are so many things going on in the Medical Center that are really ready for prime time, but people just don't quite know how to move forward," she said.

Houston needs a complete ecosystem beginning with academic research institutions leading to business incubators and angel investors and venture capitalists. For this, we need business leaders and corporations to put as much attention into science as they do into oil and gas.

The life sciences offer an opportunity to diversify Houston's economy - if we create the right environment.

The rest is here:

Life-saving treatment shows why Houston needs medical-startup ecosystem - Houston Chronicle