UT Health San Antonio, The University of Texas at San Antonio’s academic health center, has been recognized as one of the nation’s top 10 institutions for entrepreneurial readiness, ranking No. 7 in the inaugural Cure Innovation Index for how effectively it helps researchers translate scientific discovery into real-world impact through biomedical innovation and commercialization.
The ranking coincides with San Antonio’s rising profile as an entrepreneurial powerhouse. The Alamo City recently ranked No. 1 among the “2026 Top 10 Most Entrepreneurial U.S. Cities,” leading the nation with 11% growth in active businesses in 2025, according to the GoDaddy Small Business Research Lab, which analyzes the impact of online microbusinesses on local economies.
UT Health San Antonio also ranked No. 31 in “Top Universities” and No. 45 in “Research Capabilities” in the Cure Innovation Index, reflecting the scientific strength, infrastructure and funding base that support high-impact biomedical discoveries.
The index — released in late April by Cure, a New York-based healthcare innovation ecosystem — evaluated more than 6,000 universities and biomedical research institutions, identifying 303 top-performing institutions, including 243 universities and 60 institutes and centers.
The recognition underscores how the academic health center’s innovations and discoveries are making a difference.
“While rankings are always good to receive, the real test for our university is seeing our research outcomes live in the world and living up to our tagline to ‘make lives better,’” said Anthony Robert Francis, associate vice president, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, Office of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships for UT San Antonio.
“Comparative data from the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) show [that] our active projects [are] double the national average and our portfolio expansion to non-IP projects is rare,” Francis said.
The university is also helping to drive the local economy. As of October 2025, UT Health San Antonio alone enabled the launch of close to 75 companies from technologies developed by faculty and staff and UT San Antonio has helped create over 6,500 businesses.
By taking a more proactive approach to commercializing innovations and discoveries, the university’s annual revenue from commercialization projects has grown fourfold since 2023 — climbing from $800K to $3.2 million a year, Francis stated.
Currently, the university has 176 active commercialization projects with a potential portfolio value estimated to exceed $600 million. Seventy-five of those projects are considered high impact with the potential to make a substantial economic impact on the local economy, Francis stated, adding that the university’s market-first approach is helping to drive the revenue upswing for its commercialization projects.
Leaning into a market-first approach
Intellectual property remains an important part of commercialization. In 2025, The University of Texas System ranked No. 4 worldwide and No. 3 among U.S. universities for the number of U.S. utility patents granted, according to the National Academy of Inventors. At UT San Antonio, a market-first approach also recognizes that non-intellectual property projects can offer important opportunities to bring innovations and discoveries to market.
“We have a fairly unusual process inasmuch as the market-first approach precedes whether there’s any intellectual property there or not,” Francis said. Most offices … first check whether there is any intellectual property. … We ask if there is a market first. So, the determination of whether there is a market or not then dictates what we do.
“Our process is to look at the market and give that feedback to the inventor,” Francis said. “That feedback shapes the project and determines what path to take. If you are opening the gate to things that have market value, then you are naturally opening the gate to all technologies and all things that might have consumer value. To my knowledge, there [are] very few universities that are doing that. So that has really been a point of competitive interest.”
Francis used the analogy of a movie producer guiding a project from idea to reality.
“There’s a role missing in commercialization and it’s the act of producing,” Francis said, adding that fostering a “producer mindset” is key. “This is an area in which we perhaps are leading, certainly in terms of how we get researchers activated in [the commercialization] space.”
“That producer mindset,” Francis continued, “is ultimately meant to support and elevate the researchers who are driving discovery across the university, because it’s the university’s multidisciplinary researchers who are the real stars.”
“They produce our stock, without which, we can’t trade,” Francis said. “We do not have the investment houses on the West Coast or the branding of Ivy Leagues, but we can mix [in] with any of them. This is what attracts potential partners and investors.”