North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

• Author: Tolson, E. Norris

Friends and colleagues:

Welcome to our second annual printing of this impressive overview of North Carolina's bioscience businesses.

I invite you to flip through the pages to see our diversity and strength through our 530 R&D, biomanufacturing, and contract research and testing companies.

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You'll find many global corporate giants that astutely recognized North Carolina's many assets and invested billions to be here. It's also fun to discover the up-and-coming companies that may one day be household names.

In this and succeeding editions, you'll see more activity in the agricultural sector, as we expand existing ag/bio companies, and import new ones, to grow our $70 billion ag economy to $100 billion a year by 2020.

Increasingly, listed firms are part of our statewide Centers of Innovation, developing advanced medical devices and technologies, advancing new applications for nanotechnology and merging the best of what we know of genomics, informatics and nutrition to sneak up on cancer and other health challenges in novel and increasingly effective ways. Some are also starting to tap in to the huge, previously under-explored potential of our marine life.

Obviously, the value of this publication can best be understood in human terms. If you've heard me talk about the Biotechnology Center in any of my travels around the...