Your next discovery should be Metro Denver's emerging bio industry.

With almost 14,950 bioscience workers at over 500 companies, the nine-county Metro Denver and Northern Colorado region is an emerging bioscience location.

The region ranks seventh among the top 50 metro areas for 2008 employment concentration in medical devices and 16th for pharmaceuticals and biotechnology employment.

The Fitzsimons Life Science District and the adjacent Anschutz Medical Campus are one of the most ambitious medical developments in the country, is the focal point of opportunity in the bioscience industry. When complete, the $4.3 billion project encompassing 578 total acres and more than six million square feet of new real estate will be a world-class scientific community offering cutting-edge space, services, and support to more than 30,000 bioscience professionals.

Numerous university and bioscience research facilities dot the region and scientific talent is abundant with Metro Denver ranking Colorado the fourth-best state for business by Forbes magazine in 2009. Industry support and advocacy is available through the Colorado BioScience Association, which is working to create a premier bioscience cluster within the state. 

Colorado's bioscience industry received yet another boost when Nobel Laureate Tom Cech returned to the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) in April 2009 after 10 years as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Cech, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the discovery that RNA in living cells can function as a catalyst, will spend his time teaching, doing lab work, and directing the university's Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology (CIMB).

As further incentive to move your company's bottom line, the state of Colorado has amassed several programs to help bioscience companies succeed. Recent legislation provides SBIR matching grants, sales tax exemptions for manufacturing equipment in clean room operations, and a five-year, $31.5 million Bioscience and Life Science Fund providing grants to startup companies and research institutions.

With all of this momentum, it's no wonder the region was ranked a top-five life science and development location in a Site Selection magazine survey. So take a closer look at Metro Denver – nowhere in the country will you discover better access to knowledge workers, venture capital, and innovation.

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