Next stop: Houston

Last month's opening by Johnson & Johnson of the Houston-based JLABS incubator is being seen as a coup by local leaders hoping to make the city the "third coast" of biotech. But stakeholders inside and outside the region see this as an important but small step in what could be a 10-year road to bringing Houston to roughly where New York is now.

The new incubator, dubbed JLABS@TMC, was launched by Johnson & Johnson Innovation, the pharma's early stage collaboration unit, and is the organization's fifth JLABS site in the U.S., following openings in San Francisco, South San Francisco, San Diego and Boston. The pharma plans to launch its first ex-U.S. incubator in Toronto in mid-May. ...