Southeastern North Carolina, for example—once a hub for Dutch immigrant flower growers and the allied businesses, such as fertilizer and trucking, that served them—has become a center for contract research organizations (CROs) serving the pharmaceutical industry. This, in turn, has produced a raft of related enterprises: New pharmaceutical companies have sprung up in the area; additional research organizations have appeared; companies that recruit and screen participants and provide support services for human drug trials have located there; and the local state university campus is now offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in clinical research, as well as programs that seek to harness the school’s specialized expertise in marine science to identify and commercialize “novel compounds with potential pharmaceutical applications from marine organisms.”