Biopharma Economic Development: North Carolina

The biopharma industry is growing at a fast pace and doesn’t look to be slowing down. Pharmaceutical companies, therefore, are looking to contract manufacturers and biotech companies to partner with and areas in which to invest in to meet growing demand. BioPharm International^® spoke with William O. Bullock, Senior VP, Economic and Statewide Development, North Carolina Biotechnology Center, about how North Carolina is meeting those demands.

“[North Carolina is] really well positioned,” Bullock says. “We're also a big agricultural state. We're a big clinical research state. So, I think as those things become more integrated as well, right? And as we talk about the integration of engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, biology, and interdisciplinary approaches to solving big problems, we're just very well positioned here through our academic institutions, and a lot of the collaborations we built to start thinking about that. And we have new interdisciplinary research centers going up at NC State and at Duke and UNC and some of the other schools. I'll throw in a little pitch for the NC Biotechnology Center. We've, we've been here 41 years, working to build this collaborative environment. So, I think it's great to have the independent resources, but how those resources work together to kind of enhance the capacity to solve a problem will matter more and more going forward. And I you know the this, this life science community has grown up with and around the Biotech Center, and I'm excited about how we can kind of go to the next level of integrating those resources to solve some of the problems. So excited about the potential of what we can do here.”

Click the video above the watch the full interview.

About the speaker

William O. Bullock is senior VP, Economic and Statewide Development, at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.