Due to Greater Omaha’s supportive, pro-business climate and commitment to innovation, the region has been a leader in deploying practical biotechnology solutions in healthcare, livestock care and production, agricultural and energy industry. With strong academic, industry and government partnerships, the bio sciences industry in Greater Omaha continues to thrive.

Greater Omaha is the headquarters to more than twenty bioscience companies including: medical instrumentation company, Streck Laboratories, and diversified agricultural giant, ConAgra.

Greater Omaha is home to two university research centers – the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and Creighton University. Both Creighton and UNMC have seen major campus expansions including a new undergraduate research building at Creighton and two new research towers at UNMC.

This expansion has also expanded the development and commercialization efforts at both institutions. Both have recent spin-off successes, such as SafeStitch, Ximerex, and Transgenomic. In fact, the University of Nebraska has established a for-profit entity, UneMed, intended to help research and development commercialize technologies.

Greater Omaha’s Midwest location has also helped it create a niche in the biofuels. First National Bank is one of the largest biofuels lenders and Tenaska is an emerging biofuels trader. However, the real strength of the Omaha biofuels market is the number of producers that have significant offices in Omaha – including Praj Energy, Prime Biosolutions, and Cargill which has a $1 Billion biofuels operation in Washington County.

Greater Omaha’s Midwest location has also placed it squarely in the middle of the food production pipeline. Thus, not only do companies like ConAgra, Omaha Steaks, and Kellogg’s have large operations in the Omaha area, but companies that specialize in protecting the food supply and managing nutritional inputs to the human body also thrive.