The biomedical industry in Texas

I've been working in Texas as a postdoctoral research scientist in biology for six years now, so I've gotten to know the local lay of the land pretty well as far as academic research goes. But commercial activity in biomedical research in terms of pharmaceuticals, biotech and medical devices? I didn't have much of a clue at all. A bit of Googling took me to http://www.texaswideopenforbusiness.com, a website put together by the Texas Economic Development Division within the Office of the Governor of Texas. They've put together reports detailing the status within Texas of a variety of industries, including Biotechnology and Life Sciences. The 2012 Texas Biotechnology Industry Report is particularly useful; it's probably the single best overview of the Texas biomed scene out there. Also useful is their directory of Texas-based biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Over the upcoming weeks, I hope to do some analysis of the information contained in these documents.

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Finding the Innovators: Recipients of Healthcare-Related SBIR Awards

The SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program is a federal initiative that provides funding for small businesses to engage in research and development. Tracking SBIR awardees, I believe, should be a great method for identifying entrepreneurial, innovation-oriented players within the Texas economy. I decided to identify which Texas-based companies in the healthcare/biomedical industry have received SBIR awards in the recent past, and how much funding they have obtained. The SBIR website contains a well-curated database of all current and past awardees (for visualizing national trends, be sure to check out their amazing "Graphical Tools" page). I pulled up a list of all SBIR awards given to Texas-based companies between 2008 and 2012 that were sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services – thus limiting the search results to grants awarded to companies in the healthcare/biomedical industry. The list consisted of 186 grants awarded to 85 different co...

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