U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, met with Robert Curl, Rice's Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and a Nobel laureate, before convening his second annual Healthcare Innovation Summit Feb. 20 at the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies' Anderson-Clarke Center.
Crenshaw spoke to a near-capacity crowd inside Hudspeth Auditorium on the growth and importance of Houston’s health innovation economy and possible implications of health care policy ideas being discussed at the national level.
As part of the gathering attended by invited leaders from industry, academia and government, Crenshaw announced two distinguished recipients of this year’s Susan Crenshaw Congressional Healthcare Innovation Award: Nobel laureate Jim Allison of the MD Anderson Cancer Center and retired breast cancer physician-researcher Dr. Peter Ravdin, who treated Crenshaw’s mother, the award's namesake, more than 2 1/2 decades ago. In accepting their awards, Allison spoke about advances in using immunology to fight cancer and what inspired him to enter the field, while Ravdin spoke about the courage of patients who participate in clinical trials and the importance of greater trial awareness overall.
Crenshaw then conducted a series of fireside chats with innovators from Texas Medical Center institutions and the heads of two startup companies that spun out of TMC-based research.