In many respects, the dividing line between academics and industry blurs across many areas of North Carolina. As depicted here, this state provides a home for some of the most powerful research institutions in the world. Much of the academic work, however, leads to new applications, as shown here in the work on stem cells by Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the genetic approach to diseases taken by Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The state also attracts a range of industries from natural products and pharmaceuticals to manufacturing enzymes and vaccines. Moreover, some of the research in North Carolina's universities turns into start-up companies, such as the work from Dani Bolognesi's Duke University lab on an HIV fusion-inhibitor that led to Trimeris, as described here. Likewise, the bigger companies often spin off new ones.
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