Kris Khalil starts the day not in a boardroom, but by balancing his attention between an 8-week-old commanding his attention and an 18-month-old toddler zig-zagging around the house.
Within hours, he'll trade that morning mayhem for a different kind of chaos: a New Orleans Chamber of Commerce event at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center, which will draw a few hundred business leaders for networking and discussion.
As executive director of NOBIC and managing director of the BioFund, Khalil is managing facilities, investments, and an ambitious vision to transform New Orleans into the nation's premier destination for brain care innovation.
That vision just took center stage on October 30, as NOBIC hosted BioChallenge 2025, a global pitch competition that was focused for the first time entirely on neuroscience innovations.
It's a bold bet on a massive market need and Louisiana's unique ability to address it.
The Trillion-Dollar Challenge
New Orleans has no shortage of ambitious reinvention stories, but this latest push may be its boldest yet. According to the World Health Organization, neurological conditions have become the world's No. 1 health burden, affecting more than one in three people globally.
The economic toll is staggering: When accounting for unpaid care, lost earnings and quality of life the total national burden approaches a trillion dollars.
"Brain health touches every family and every employer, and we urgently need new technologies to deliver better outcomes," explained Khalil.
Louisiana carries a particularly heavy load when it comes to brain health challenges. The state is home to nearly 100,000 residents aged 65 and older living with Alzheimer's disease, with approximately 250,000 family caregivers providing millions of hours of unpaid care annually.
The state's stroke mortality rate also ranks among the nation's highest, compounding healthcare and economic challenges.
The opportunity, as Khalil sees it, extends beyond addressing immediate healthcare needs.
"We think the care economy, the brain health economy, is the economy,” he said. “And it's a workforce strategy that's hiding in plain sight."
This vision is gaining traction well beyond Louisiana. Texas recently launched a proposed $3 billion “moonshot” initiative to fund brain research and accelerate therapies for conditions like Alzheimer’s, driving their economic policy around what experts call the "brain capital economy."
For New Orleans, with its concentration of academic research institutions and major health systems, the timing couldn't be better. The city already has the infrastructure; all it needs is a coordinated push to turn that potential into reality.
Catalytic Role
When the New Orleans BioInnovation Center finally opened its doors in 2012, it stood as a symbol of post-Katrina resilience. Conceived in the early 2000s but delayed by Katrina, the center emerged with one clear mandate: diversify an economy long dominated by tourism and oil by cultivating the frontier industry of biotechnology.
NOBIC’s straightforward mission is to provide early-stage companies with subsidized BSL-2 (biosafety level 2) lab facilities, wrap them in customized commercialization services, and connect them to a network of investors, mentors and clinical partners.
"Louisiana has a ton of advantages in terms of why an early-stage startup company would want to set up," Khalil noted. "We have unique advantages that allow companies to scale more efficiently, faster and with less cost."
Those advantages include proximity to powerhouse research institutions like Tulane University and LSU Health Sciences Center, along with health systems like Ochsner Health and LCMC that are, as Khalil puts it, "hungry to integrate innovation within their systems."
The proof is in the portfolio. Through the BioFund, NOBIC's investment arm, the organization has deployed $5 million into 30 companies. These companies have gone on to raise more than $250 million in private funding and create more than 1,000 jobs.
"We think of BioFund as catalytic capital for scalable science," Khalil explained. "We look for companies that have Louisiana roots, a Louisiana affiliation, first and foremost. And we ask ourselves, can our platform knock down a real risk that this company is facing in its very early stage? Whether that's regulatory, technical or data generation."
Success breeds success. Take Fluence Analytics, for instance. Born out of Tulane University and nurtured in NOBIC’s labs, the startup refined its real-time analytics technology until it caught the eye of a global player.
Earlier this year, Fluence was acquired by a public Japanese company, a milestone that both validated the work happening in New Orleans and provided tangible returns. Those proceeds aren’t disappearing into the ether, but instead are being funneled back into the community, reinvested in 20 more local startups so they can get their own shot at scaling.
Building Momentum
The recent months have seen a surge of activity that suggests NOBIC's strategy is gaining traction. Informuta, winner of the 2024 BioChallenge, best exemplifies this new momentum.
The company, which developed an AI-powered diagnostic platform for infectious diseases, initially spun out of Tulane before briefly relocating to San Diego, the better-known biotech hub. But when NOBIC offered lab space, capital support and introductions to local partners, the founders came back.
"We were able to recruit them back to New Orleans, and they just cut a ribbon on a second lab here at the BioInnovation Center, their second home," said Khalil.
The momentum doesn't stop there. Becken Bio, an early-stage cancer diagnostics startup founded by a Tulane alum, also made the move from San Diego to New Orleans, opening a new lab at NOBIC this summer. The company is developing novel biomarkers for early cancer detection, a technology that could benefit from Louisiana's diverse patient population.
"The momentum is great," said Khalil. "And we're looking forward to building on it in 2025 and 2026."
All Eyes on BioChallenge 2025
Every fall, NOBIC puts the spotlight on innovation through its BioChallenge pitch competition, but this year’s edition will be devoted entirely to neuroscience and brain-health startups.
The event has already attracted more than 110 applications from around the world, covering everything from novel drug delivery mechanisms to digital therapeutics, neuromodulation devices, and small molecules designed to cross the blood-brain barrier.
On October 30, just after the BIO on the BAYOU conference — a two-day conference hosted at the Jung Hotel and NOBIC that showcases emerging biotech and health science breakthroughs — finalists will gather at NOBIC’s downtown facility to pitch their ideas before a room full of investors, judges and industry leaders. More than $100,000 in prizes is on the line, but the prize money is only a small part of the draw.
For Khalil and his team, the bigger goal is to make New Orleans “sticky” for these companies.
"What folks are looking for are clinical partners, pilots, research partners and investment, and so we're aligning all of those for the companies that we're going to be flying into New Orleans," Khalil explained.
Working Around the Roadblocks
For all the momentum, Khalil is quick to acknowledge that building a biotech hub in Louisiana comes with its share of hurdles. Chief among them is the volatility of federal research funding. Programs like NIH grants or SBIR/STTR cycles have become less predict companies on edge.
Rather than wait for conditions to improve, NOBIC is actively building workarounds. The organization has hosted roundtables with Congressman Troy Carter and Sen. Bill Cassidy, convening stakeholders from academia, health systems, investors and policymakers to coordinate responses.
"While the community is, in a way, dealing with the uncertainty on the federal funding end, NOBIC is using this as an opportunity to convene the stakeholders and have conversations about what we can do to continue to build on this momentum that we have in New Orleans and Louisiana in the biotech space," said Khalil.
Another gap is talent. In more mature biotech hubs, startups benefit from “repeat operators,” founders who have built, scaled and sold companies multiple times. In New Orleans, where the life sciences industry is still relatively young, that bench is thinner.
To address the issue, NOBIC is cultivating a mentor network of seasoned biotech executives and actively recruiting companies back to the city. The return of Informuta and the relocation of Becken Bio from San Diego are case studies in how that strategy can work.
"There will always be bigger markets,” Khalil noted, “but our market competes very well on speed, connectivity and community.”
Making New Orleans a Neuro Innovation Destination
For Khalil, this work is also quite personal. A New Orleans native who returned home after Hurricane Katrina, Khalil made the leap from banking to biotech in 2012 when he joined NOBIC to run the BioFund.
"It was a really unique opportunity to gain a new skill set and to help drive the post-Katrina economy in a frontier space," he noted.
After serving as executive director since 2018, Khalil sees the brain health initiative as something far beyond economic development. His core goals involve extending productive lives and expanding what he calls "the longevity dividend."
"Folks who are able to live longer and live more productive lives for a longer amount of time naturally will help drive the economy even further," he noted. “We’re very excited about the potential.”
But excitement alone won’t get the city there. Khalil emphasized that the next leap forward would require sustained collaboration and commitment. Universities, hospitals, investors and local government will need to rally around a shared agenda for brain health, developing policies that can support neuro-focused companies with the same urgency that other states are showing.
The good news is that the groundwork is already being laid. Thanks to NOBIC’s intervention and collaboration, local leaders are beginning to see brain care as both a healthcare issue and an economic growth strategy.
Khalil admitted his own awareness came late.
"Growing up here in New Orleans, I wasn't aware of the amazing infrastructure that we have here, the amazing amount of research that we have here, and the unique resources and the unique economy that we have in this space that we've had for over a century,” he said.
His goal now is to get others to see what he sees — that New Orleans offers the top-tier science, supportive community,and unmatched passion for innovation that brain startups need to thrive.
"While the community is, in a way, dealing with the uncertainty on the federal funding end, NOBIC is using this as an opportunity to convene the stakeholders and have conversations about what we can do to continue to build on this momentum that we have in New Orleans and Louisiana in the biotech space."
