MONTGOMERY, Alabama --- Gov. Robert Bentley said today he hopes his trade trip to Japan last week will bring more biomedical research to Alabama universities and institutions.

Bentley said he met with the pharmaceutical company Otsuka Holdings. It has an Alabama connection as the parent company of Pharmavite, which makes vitamins and supplements at a new plant in Opelika.

The governor said Otsuka Holdings spends about half of its money on research and development.

"They did not realize what we have available here in Alabama," Bentley said. He mentioned the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of South Alabama and other universities as possible sites, as well as HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Southern Research Institute in Birmingham and others

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - CFD Research Corp. will come together with local officials Tuesday afternoon to commemorate the company's new headquarters along McMillian Park at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville.

CFDRC, which recently closed a deal with United Kingdom-based Rolls Royce Ltd. to sell its patented "lean burn" aircraft engine technology to reduce engine emissions, is the first company to occupy the new 88,000-square-foot HudsonAlpha facility that broke ground in June 2011.

Company President Joseph M. Cosumano, Jr., a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General, said CFDRC's 29,000-square-foot space "has an outstanding layout for R&D with state-of-the-art laboratories."

"Our new facilities are evidence that we have embarked on a new path of innovation and applications by broadening our aerospace base with biomedical, energy and materials," he said in a statement. "We call this quest CFDRC version 2.0."