Big 5 .

It doesn’t get the same attention as Kansas City’s quest to become a mecca for the life sciences or our push to be America’s most entrepreneriurial city, but Kansas City’s zeal to be the global center for animal health research is far further along than any of those efforts.

Many people don’t realize that our region already is home to four of the top 10 largest animal health companies in the world.

Championing an effort by the Chamber of Commerce to now bring a world symposium on animal health to Kansas City is a well known name to Kansas Citians…Gary Forsee.

After months of task forces and meetings and shrinking down its list from close to 200 big ideas, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce introduced its Big 5 Ideas. They decided to roll up their sleeves and proposed moving UMKC’s world class arts programs to a new downtown location, revitalize our urban neighborhoods through the urban Neighborhood Initiative, host a global symposium on innovation in animal health, and transform Kansas City into “America’s Most Entrepreneurial City.”

Their fifth idea was to grow Kansas City’s medical research from discovery to cure.

Just recently, they got a whole lot closer to achieving that goal as the University of Kansas Medical Center was awarded National Cancer Institute designation.

Nick Haines gets an update from the man leading the intitiative, Dr. Patrick James.