Biotech develops formula that nurtures job growth.

• Position: LIFE SCIENCES

Several times a week during much of the last year, Monica Doss answered her phone to find someone from the West Coast calling to ask about the state's life-sciences industry. Most were California biotech veterans. About half told her they planned to move to North Carolina--whether a job was waiting or not.

Doss, executive director of the Research Triangle Park-based Council for Entrepreneurial Development, says what's triggering the calls is a widening sense that something big is brewing in the Tar Heel State. Those California biotech execs feel it. So do business lawyers and venture capitalists around the Triangle. They're getting lots of inquiries about startups and seed capital. "You can't even get some of these people to come out for a cocktail reception," she says. "They're all busy. There is a groundswell."

In June, the Milken Institute, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank, said North Carolina had the nation's fastest-growing life-sciences work force. Ernst & Young, in its 2005 review of the biotech industry, cited North Carolina as one of the nation's biotech hot spots. "Things look very rosy," says Barry Teater, spokesman for the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

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The Biotech Center estimates job growth of 5% to 10% in 2006, which could mean up to 4,500 jobs added to the estimated 45,000 in place at drug factories, contract-research labs and biotech companies. To help keep up, N.C. State University in Raleigh began construction last year of a $34 million Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center at its Centennial Campus. Scheduled for completion later this year, it will be able to train up to 3,000 workers a year.

But an even bigger potential boost to the industry is a $1 billion research center in Kannapolis proposed by California billionaire David Murdoch and backed by the University of North Carolina. Murdoch owns Dole Foods, the world's largest fresh fruit and vegetable producer, and once owned Cannon Mills, predecessor to Kannapolis-based Pillowtex, a textile giant that shut down in 2003. Murdoch wants to convert a Pillowtex plant he bought in 2004 into a research center that focuses on nutrition and food science and could create up to 35,000 jobs. "With the right partnerships and cooperation, it could be a tremendous asset for that region and for the whole state," Teater says.

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Venture-capital investments in the Southeast through the third quarter of 2005...