Kansas City Prepares Life Sciences Primer

A group of Kansas City bi-state community development organizations, led by KCCatalyst and the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute (KCALSI), released a report Friday that illustrates Kansas City’s bi-state life sciences initiative and lays out how the region can become a national and global center for life sciences research and commercialization.

The report, A Guide to Life Sciences in Greater Kansas City, serves as a basic primer on the nature of the life sciences industry today and the potential role it can play in the economy of greater Kansas City’s bi-state region. One of the report’s direct purposes will be to market and promote the bi-state region’s life sciences initiative to the bi-state region and across the country. The KCADC, for example, will use this report in all of its national marketing efforts to recruit life sciences-focused companies and jobs to the bi-state region.

According to A Guide to Life Sciences in Greater Kansas City, the stakes are high in this race. Leading economic forecasters, for example, predict that 15 to 18 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product will be comprised of health care and life sciences activities over the next two decades. The competition between communities for the billions of dollars in revenue, investment dollars, and jobs that are expected to be created over the next five to ten years in the bio-economy will be fierce.

A Guide to the Life Sciences in Greater Kansas City works to put greater Kansas City’s progress in the life sciences in focus while, at the same time, clearly articulating the challenges the bi-state region faces in the future.

Copies of the Guide are available at: http://www.kccatalyst.com/