Bio-Based Businesses

Central New Mexico's dynamic biomedical and biotechnology cluster numbers more than 100 companies, with employers ranging from Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon Endo-Surgery plant to tech-transfer start-ups. Their activities include the manufacture of devices and supplies, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and bioinformatics. Many bio-based businesses benefit from such industry advantages as the state's generous incentives and partnership possibilities with our two national laboratories and numerous research facilities.

In 2004 New Mexico ranked 14th on Milken's State Technology and Science Index, a measure of technology and science assets that can be leveraged to promote economic development.

Resources for biotech companies here are unmatched:

• Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories have been deeply involved in the biosciences and are now in the forefront of bio-terrorism defense.
• The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center has a unique repository of data on entire populations of patients, and UNM has one of few high-performance parallel computers among universities.
• The National Center for Genome Resources in Santa Fe develops software to help scientists understand biological data.
• Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute is the nation's only private, basic science, biomedical research organization dedicated to respiratory disease research.
• The Santa Fe Institute is nationally known for its work on complexity and complex adaptive systems.
• New Mexico Genome Sequencing Center  in Santa Fe is a non-profit research institution dedicated to improving human health, nutrition and the environment.
  

The Metro region has numerous bioscience-based companies, many of which participate in the New Mexico Biotechnology and Biomedical Association.