Next 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters

The days of biotech businesses and institutions limiting their research and commercial activity to top clusters like Boston/Cambridge, MA, and the San Francisco Bay Area are passing, as the life sciences expand their horizons to regions and states not usually thought of as hotspots for the industry.

“Life science entrepreneurship and new product development is flourishing outside traditional coastal epicenters, creating a dynamic and distributed map of regional hubs across the United States,” wrote John Flavin, founder and CEO of venture capital firm Portal Innovations, and Pat Flavin, John’s brother and Portal’s president, in Biotech’s Future Will Be More Distributed, a guest editorial published December 15, 2025, by Timmerman Report.

Portal itself reflects that trend, having U.S. locations not only in Chicago (No. 9 on GEN’s most recent A-List of Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters, published June 1), but in Providence, RI; the New York suburb of New Brunswick, NJ; and Houston (Portal also has a fifth office in Dublin, Ireland).

The Flavin brothers cited several factors in the industry becoming more ‘‘distributed” or scattered beyond the largest clusters:

• Academic research shifting—Over the past decade, research has shifted to a translational focus, to address the need for more practical application in life sciences.
• Federal funding flattening—Cutbacks in or leveling amounts of NIH funding (depending on the region) have forced universities to adopt new avenues for attracting and retaining research talent—such as pursuing closer relationships with industry.
• COVID-19—The pandemic that wreaked havoc on the world “acted as a global shock to the life sciences innovation system, accelerating pre-existing trends and forcing a rapid re-evaluation of how and where innovation happens,” John and Pat Flavin wrote.

The growth of biotech hubs outside of the top 10 regions and states ranked since 2014 in GEN’s nationally- and regionally-cited top 10 clusters A-List has increasingly sparked a question among readers: What are the next up-and-coming hubs for life sciences activity?

GEN attempts to answer this question through this first-ever A-List of Next 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters. This list is actually three lists in one: A top five ranking of emerging regions below the top 10 long highlighted by this publication; a top five ranking of states that have shown initiative and accomplishment in building up their life-sci ecosystems but whose individual regional clusters alone do not rise to the top; and an unranked list of up-and-coming regions and states to watch, based on recent announcements.

GEN bases its regional rankings on five criteria:

• Patents: Figures from the Patent Public Search database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, showing the number of patent families containing the word “biotechnology” and towns and cities within a given region or state.
• NIH funding: Figures for NIH funding were taken from the publicly available NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) database for the current federal fiscal year through July 6, plus all of fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025).
• Venture capital funding: Figures for all of 2025 and, where available, the first quarter of 2026 as compiled by regional life sciences groups and PitchBook, which joins with the National Venture Capital Association to publish the quarterly Venture Monitor reports.
• Laboratory space: The total-size-of-market figure, in millions of square feet, as furnished by regional life sciences groups. In regions that did not compile such information, the figure cited is the highest by any of several commercial real estate companies, including CBRE Group, Colliers, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, and Newmark.
• Number of jobs: The preferred sources for job figures were regional life sciences groups. Alternative sources included commercial real estate firms.

The ranking of states proved tougher than anticipated because while the sources of lab space info (commercial real estate firms and industry groups) do not compile statistics for entire states, or have not done so recently, sources for venture capital and workforce numbers either collect only regional info or have not collected it within the past year.

 

Next 5 Regions

 

1. Houston, TX

Like many of the largest biopharma clusters, Greater Houston is reaping the fruits of Eli Lilly’s investment surge: The pharma giant is planning a $6.5 billion manufacturing site to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients for oral drugs—including Foundayo^® (orforglipron), the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist obesity drug. Lilly grew its regional footprint in April by acquiring Houston startup CrossBridge Bio, a developer of next-generation dual-payload antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), for up to $300 million. Another Houston startup, Duracyte, was formally launched to commercialize its Hybrid Advanced Molecular Manufacturing Regulator (HAMMR) technology, designed to produce therapeutic proteins continuously inside the human body. Duracyte’s co-founders include Robert Langer, ScD, institute professor at MIT: “He sees a lot of potential for the Houston ecosystem,” Omid Veiseh, PhD, another Duracyte co-founder and managing partner of RBL LLC, an incubator evolved from Rice University Biotech Launch Pad, told GEN. “There’s a lot of great talent. But the unique advantage that we have is we are able to benefit from a lot of unique clinical infrastructure and clinician insights. There are a lot of clinicians here who are eager to partner on investigator-initiated trials.”

Houston’s Generation Park, a 4,300-acre master planned mixed-use campus, has been selected by Bristol Myers Squibb for a $1 billion, 600,000-square-foot manufacturing site set to create about 500 jobs by 2031. The region’s largest life-sci campus is the world’s largest medical complex, the 1,345-acre, 54 million-square-foot Texas Medical Center (TMC), home to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine’s primary campus. TMC and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) on June 29 expanded their TMC Korea BioBridge, a partnership designed to assist South Korean biotech, digital health and medtech companies seeking to enter and expand Stateside.

Among emerging regions, Greater Houston leads in NIH funding (2,262 awards totaling $1.251 billion), is second highest among emerging regions in jobs (28,000+, according to BioHouston), and places second in lab space with about eight million square feet. “We have a very good supply of lab space in this area,” BioHouston’s chairman Jeff Wade told GEN. He said the region scooped up about a half-billion dollars in VC funding between 2025-2026 to date, which would propel Houston to second, significantly more than the approximately $300 million tallied by PitchBook. In patents, Houston finishes sixth with 2,760 families.

 

2. Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

Minneapolis-St. Paul’s life sciences sector was jolted June 25 when Minneapolis-based tools, analytical technologies, and consumables giant Bio-Techne agreed to be acquired for $11.3 billion by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. The news raised fears that Bio-Techne would shed at least some local jobs within its 3,100-person global workforce (2,300 in the U.S.), since Merck KGaA said it will carry out cost-cutting “synergies” of approximately €140 million (about $160 million) that are expected to be fully realized by the third year after closing. The region’s life-sci industry has long been heavy on medical device and medtech: “We are seeing some demand from pharmaceutical companies, too, but we are nowhere near the power of Raleigh or the Boston-Cambridge area,” Chris Lyles, director of life science and technology with Minneapolis-based Knutson Construction, told REjournals in April.

In St. Paul, nonprofit University Enterprise Laboratories (UEL), which is unaffiliated with the University of Minnesota, is working to raise the $3 million it says is needed to convert a 4,000-square-foot storage area into a shared lab space with 45 lab benches for companies at the earliest stages, plus an adjacent “learning lab” for student training and engagement. “The market is telling us there’s demand,” UEL board chair Barbara Nelsen told The Minnesota Star Tribune in April. The current space has been filled for five years, with UEL executive director Sam Shuster telling the news outlet it receives a constant two to three requests for lab space weekly.

“MSP,” as locals call the region, indeed lacks lab space, with just 4.4 million square feet (Revista, 2024), placing fifth, but leads emerging regions in jobs (32,748 biopharma, agritech, and distribution jobs in 2022, though the state touts 334,500 by including healthcare and medical device positions) and places a strong second in patents (3,924 families). The “Twin Cities” also finishes sixth in life-sci VC funding with $157 million last year (Colliers) but just eighth in NIH funding with 1,206 awards totaling $649.987 million.

 

3. Denver-Boulder, CO

Area biotech executives joined 430+ executives and investors across tech specialties to form Ensuring Colorado’s Innovation Future. The group has voiced to Gov. Jared Polis (D) its concern that the Denver-Boulder region and the rest of Colorado were losing their luster with tech—a perception fueled when Palantir Technologies in February announced the relocation of its HQ from Denver to Miami. Polis responded by seeking to reassure the group of his commitment to improving the state’s business climate: “We always want to double down on our successes, and we want to change whatever isn’t working,” the governor told The Denver Post.

Denver-Boulder has had its share of biopharma successes in recent months: CordenPharma, a peptide drug substance contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), leased 64,000 square feet in Boulder, CO, at 5505 Central Ave. within Flatiron Park in March. Also, that month at Flatiron Park, vaccine platform tech developer VitriVax signed a lease for 31,450 square feet at 5500 Central Ave., relocating within Boulder from 3415 Colorado Ave. near the University of Colorado. The deal came five months after VitriVax closed a $17.25 million Series B financing round whose proceeds were intended to fund development and commercialization of the company’s Atomic Layering Thermostable Antigen and Adjuvant (ALTA^®) technology.

However, Boulder, CO-based Enliven Therapeutics last month said it was moving to the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, CA. CEO Rick Fair, a former Genentech executive, told the San Francisco Business Times the move will enable Enliven to tap into the Bay Area’s deeper talent pool and life sciences cluster, which ranked second in GEN’s A-List of Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters. Yet Intero Biosystems, the developer of an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived human miniature intestine for predictive preclinical testing, moved to Denver from Michigan after receiving a $250,000 Advanced Industries grant from the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade (OEDIT). Intero’s co-founders told The Denver Post that Denver offered the potential for a better quality of life than possible within the top-tier biopharma clusters on the East and West coasts.

Among emerging regions, Denver-Boulder scored best in VC funding, leading with $565 million (Colliers), and placed fourth in patents (3,062 families) and lab space (6.2 million square feet, according to Revista). The region ranked fifth in NIH funding (1,833 awards totaling $862.286 million), but ninth in workforce (14,856 jobs, according to Colliers).

 

4. St. Louis, MO

This year marks 25 years of BioSTL, a regional life-sci industry group whose co-founders include William Danforth, MD, the civic leader who established the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (named for his father) in the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur, MO, serving as its chairman through 2013. “It was never plant science or medical science. It was always both,” Donn Rubin, BioSTL’s founding president and CEO, told St. Louis Magazine in May: “Our region has remarkable strengths across that entire spectrum.”

Those strengths include top-tier districts like the 35+ company, agtech-focused 39 North AgTech Innovation District, anchored by Bayer Crop Science and the Danforth Center; and the Cortex Innovation District, which finished 2025 as home to 406 companies employing 5,400 people and generating $163.8 million in taxes between 2014–2025. Cortex also achieved 100% occupancy last year when pathogen detection tools developer Varro Life Sciences moved in, investing $42.5 million and creating 33 new jobs. Within Cortex, C2N Diagnostics—a developer of tests for Alzheimer’s disease and related forms of neurodegeneration—is set to move into Catalyst: Powered by WashU, where it will anchor the $100 million redevelopment of the former Goodwill building (4140 Forest Park Ave.) spearheaded by Washington University in St. Louis and a developer affiliated with the school, BOBB. The project consists of renovating the existing seven stories and adding a four-story addition. In June, C2N agreed to bring its tests to Latin America and the Caribbean through a collaboration with Miami-based diagnostics developer SouthGenetics. As for the Danforth Center, it named a new COO in June: Derek Rapp, previously a managing director with life-sci focused VC firm RiverVest Venture Partners, which has an office in St. Louis as well as in Cleveland and San Diego.

Reflecting the strength of its institutions, St. Louis dominates emerging regions in patents, where it leads with 11,049 families, and is a strong second in NIH funding with 1,855 awards totaling $1.186 billion. The region places sixth in VC funding with $134 million (BioSTL), seventh in workforce with 21,376 life-sci jobs (BioSTL), and 10^th in lab space (an estimated 3.185 million square feet based on Cortex’s 1.9 million, 39 North’s 1 million, and 285,000 square feet of incubator space (BioSTL + GEN research).

 

5. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX

The city of Dallas calls itself “Biotech’s Next Frontier” while Fort Worth boasted during the recent BIO International Convention about its “Location, Location, Location.” The region’s life-sci attractions include Pegasus Park, the 23-acre former ExxonMobil HQ off Stemmons Freeway, where four buildings totaling 750,000 square feet have been activated. The park’s Biotech+ hub has attracted three anchors in recent years: BioLabs Pegasus Park, a 37,000-square-foot facility offering flexible lab, training, and office space; the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Customer Experience Hub; and Bridge Labs at Pegasus Park, which offers 135,000 square feet of R&D space. At Bridge Labs, the University of Texas at Arlington and Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station opened a new biomanufacturing training and research hub in December.

Dallas is also home to de-extinction-focused Colossal Biosciences, whose nonprofit Colossal Foundation pledged in June to collect, sequence, and preserve the genetic material of more than 2,300 threatened and endangered plant and animal species, and release the resulting data at no cost through a partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In suburban Plano, TX, Dallas-based investment firm NexPoint is spearheading development of another campus for life-sci users, the $4 billion Texas Research Quarter, which is envisioned to transform the former Electronic Data Systems HQ into four million square feet of R&D space on 200 acres, in four phases. Another Dallas suburb, Denton, TX, is where Novartis plans to build a 46,000-square-foot radioligand therapy (RLT) manufacturing site, announced by the pharma giant in February. The site—Novartis’ first in Texas—is expected to become fully operational in 2028.

Dallas-Fort Worth only has 3.3 million square feet of lab space, says Cushman & Wakefield (good for eighth), but that number is expected to multiply in coming years since no less than 61.2 million square feet are under construction. “DFW” fares best in workforce size and VC funding, scoring third with 26,000+ jobs (Dallas’ Office of Economic Development) and $218 million (Dealroom.com data cited by the 2025 Austin Bio & Health Report, published in February). The region also finishes sixth among emerging regions in NIH funding (1,566 awards totaling $858.342 million) and eighth in patents (1,497 families).

 

Next 5 States

 

1. Ohio (including Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus)

Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and their suburbs have enough life sciences activity for the Buckeye State to emerge first among states with emerging clusters. In June, the Ohio legislature approved $3.7 billion for 2027–28 that included $1.5 million for the Ohio Life Science Training Center (OLSTC), designed to train adults for entry-level biomanufacturing and cGMP jobs. An effort between JobsOhio, a private, nonprofit promoting economic development statewide (which last year committed $30 million to the effort) and the Ohio Life Sciences Association, OLSTC will rise in the Columbus suburb of New Albany, OH—where Amgen is completing a $900 million expansion of its final product advanced assembly and packaging plant, which when completed in 2027 will expand the company’s investment to $1.4 billion and its workforce from 400 to 750. In June, Resilience announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from San Diego to the Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash, OH, and expand sterile injectable manufacturing at its plant in another Cincy suburb, West Chester, OH.

Some 25 miles east of downtown Cincinnati in Williamsburg Township, OH, Lonza Group is considering construction of a $1 billion plant on two parcels totaling 161 acres at Half Acre Road and State Route 32 (James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway) on land owned by Clermont County. On June 29, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a 1.860%, 20-year Job Creation Tax Credit for the project, which would create 650 full-time-equivalent positions.

In June, Hikma Pharmaceuticals announced a $267 million, two-site expansion that will grow its injectable pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities, adding 300 jobs in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford, OH, while adding 50 jobs by expanding its oral solid dose and nasal inhalation manufacturing operations in Columbus. Also in June, Cleveland Clinic launched a partnership with 10x Genomics to advance research in novel diagnostics for bladder cancer. Cleveland Clinic patients with advanced bladder cancer who are undergoing emerging therapeutic regimens will have their tumor samples examined using 10x’s spatial and single-cell biology tools—part of 10x’s expansion into clinical applications.

Among emerging states, Ohio leads in NIH funding (2,763 awards totaling $1.538 billion), patents (54,536 families), and jobs (54,536 biopharma, research/testing, agritech, and distribution jobs according to Ohio Life Sciences Association).

 

2. Indiana (including Indianapolis)

Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly intends to be an even larger presence in the Hoosier State, announcing plans in May to spend an additional $4.5 billion across its two manufacturing sites in Lebanon, IN, where it opened a new genetic medicine facility in Lebanon’s LEAP Innovation District. The capital will cover new process designs and technologies at Lilly Lebanon API, a future active pharmaceutical ingredient site set to open in 2027, and Lilly Lebanon Advanced Therapies, which opened May 6 as the pharma giant’s first dedicated genetic medicine manufacturing facility. Since 2020, Lilly says, it has spent $21 billion+ on capital expansion projects statewide.

Lilly is hardly Indiana’s only biopharma headliner: In March, Gov. Mike Braun (R) announced that the Indiana Economic Development Corp. is committing $1 billion in tax credits over 10 years to add 100,000 jobs to the Hoosier State’s life-sci and agritech workforce. That would nearly double a statewide life-sci workforce of 52,526 biopharma, life-sci distribution, and agritech jobs (not including 17,473 medical device jobs), according to the online dashboard of state life-sci industry group BioCrossroads. “This investment will make Indiana the re-shoring and expansion epicenter and premier destination for human therapeutics, animal health, agritech, biotechnology, and environmental innovation,” Braun vowed.

Also expanding is Roche Diagnostics, which last year announced plans to grow its North American headquarters campus in Indianapolis by spending up to $550 million through 2030 to establish the 170-acre site as a central manufacturing hub for its next-generation continuous glucose monitoring systems. The expansion is expected to add 650 manufacturing and distribution jobs to the site’s existing 3,200+ employees.

Indiana lags in NIH funding (1,161 awards totaling about $611.594 million) but finished a strong second in both patents (52,526 families) and jobs (49,211 biopharma, research/testing, agritech, and distribution jobs, according to BioCrossroads).

 

3. Florida (including Jacksonville and Miami-Fort Lauderdale)

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Vision Care in June announced a $1 billion expansion of its Jacksonville, FL, operations for its Acuvue^® contact lenses. Plans call for a new Northwest distribution facility (50 jobs), set to be fully operational in 2028, and new equipment at its existing Southside manufacturing and corporate site within the Deerwood Park campus. Earlier this year GBI Biomanufacturing, a biologics CDMO, doubled its stem-cell manufacturing capacity by expanding at its Plantation, FL, site to all of the 40,000-square-foot 1850 N.W. 69th Ave. from 28,000 square feet. GBI Bio has long manufactured therapeutic proteins and antibodies there. And in January, Novartis chose the Orlando suburb of Winter Park, FL, for its fourth of five planned radioligand therapy (RLT) manufacturing facilities across the United States. The 35,000-square-foot site is set to open in 2029.

In Pensacola, FL, biotech manufacturing tools and services giant Cytiva last year completed the construction of new filtration manufacturing lines designed to increase the production capacity for filter membranes for North America by 20%. ILiAD Biotechnologies, based in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Weston, FL, closed in February on an oversubscribed $115 million Series B VC financing whose proceeds are intended to fund advancement of a next-generation pertussis vaccine candidate, BPZE1. And in the Miami suburb of Coral Gables, FL, Catalyst Pharmaceuticals found a buyer in May when Italy’s Angelini Pharma agreed to acquire the rare neuromuscular and neurological disease drug developer for approximately $4.1 billion.

South Florida’s emergence as a biotech hub is reflected in the region hosting the first conferences held in the region by three industry groups, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), LSX, and the Miami Biotech Collective. Last December, the Collective partnered with J.P. Morgan to launch an annual summit after being created earlier in 2025 by about 500 industry executives and investors.

Florida is a strong second in NIH funding (2,232 awards totaling $1.38 billion) but third in jobs (40,000 according to BioFlorida, which includes medical device jobs, a category tallied by South Florida Business Journal at 24,000 alone) and fourth in patents (4,682 families).

 

4. Georgia (including Atlanta and Augusta)

UCB announced plans in March for a $2 billion, 460,000-square-foot biologics manufacturing facility near Atlanta in suburban Gwinnett County. The Belgian biopharma bought 79 acres from the Rowen Foundation, which is developing a 1,900-acre campus on Highway 316, launched in 2020 as a “knowledge” community for biopharma and other innovation-based fields. Gwinnett County has committed $174 million in incentives and infrastructure investments to support UCB’s project, which is expected to create more than 330 permanent jobs once operational.

UCB’s project is the brightest recent success of Georgia life sciences leaders, who are working through industry group Georgia Life Sciences, laid out a 10-year “Roadmap” last year with the aim of “positioning Georgia as the scale-up manufacturing hub of the Southeast.” Other smaller-scale successes include Micron Biomedical, which in May celebrated the grand opening of a 26,000-square-foot manufacturing site for its dissolvable vaccine and therapeutic technology in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, GA. And two hours east of Atlanta in Augusta, GA, Manus Bio broke ground in May on an expansion that will enable its biomanufacturing facility to domestically produce artemisinin, a key ingredient in anti-malaria treatments. The project, first announced in 2024 with the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), marks the first project of a partnership that has grown to $47.4 million—including $15 million awarded in February toward domestic production of shikimic acid, a key component of the active ingredient in Tamiflu^® (oseltamivir phosphate).

Atlanta is known for longtime life-sci anchors Emory University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state’s largest life-sci employer at 6,500 people, according to Georgia Power’s Select Georgia economic development initiative. More recently, Portal Innovations’ Portal Atlanta at Science Square has grown in less than a year to 30+ startups in biotech and other industries, plus established companies like vaccine developer GeoVax, which relocated its lab and R&D staffers there late last year while moving its HQ within suburban Smyrna, GA.

Georgia showed third in NIH funding (2,153 awards totaling $1.184 billion, fourth in jobs (36,000 according to Lightcast data cited by SelectGeorgia), and fifth in patents (3,447 families).

 

5. Wisconsin (including Madison and Kenosha)

Wisconsin’s manufacturing heritage has helped the Badger State build a life sciences industry that, while heavy on diagnostics and medical device development, also includes growing biopharma activity. South of Kenosha in Pleasant Prairie, WI, Eli Lilly has committed $4 billion toward expanding its production of injectable diabetes and obesity therapies by repurposing the 84,000-square-foot facility it acquired from Nexus Pharmaceuticals in 2024 for $925 million and adding two facilities, a 54,166-square-foot office-manufacturing building and a 13,940-square-foot, four-dock warehouse. The project is expected to create 750 jobs.

In May, Fujifilm Biotechnologies executives joined state officials in officially opening Fujifilm Cellular Dynamics Inc. (FCDI)’s new headquarters and human-iPSC development and manufacturing facility in Madison, WI. The facility employs nearly 200 people and will quadruple FCDI’s capacity for its iPSC-based research products and services manufacturing footprint, with an eye to meeting future demand for contract manufacturing of cell therapy products.

Thermo Fisher Scientific in February signed two 20-year lease extensions for 8500-8551 Research Way, a pair of lab buildings totaling 233,694 square feet in the Madison suburb of Middleton, WI, where the life-sci tools giant carries out pharmaceutical product development and clinical research. Catalent last year completed a $45 million production facility expansion in Madison, WI, creating about 200 jobs. The Madison facility provides development, manufacturing, and analytical services for new biologics; houses Catalent’s GPEx^® Lightning cell line technology, designed to create high-yielding mammalian cell lines genetically modified to create large quantities of a desired protein; and features development and manufacturing labs for flexible preclinical, clinical, and commercial production of biologics from 50- to 4,000-liter scale.

The manufacturing heritage gives the state a competitive advantage, according to the public-private Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. (WEDC), which says suppliers from across the state provide $7.8 billion in products to “biohealth” companies, including pharma and life-sci R&D businesses, as well as medical device developers.

Among emerging states, Wisconsin is fourth in both NIH funding (1,557 awards totaling $913.388 million) and patents (17,944 families), and sixth in jobs (30,749 biopharma, research/testing, agritech, and distribution jobs according to WEDC).

 

Regional and State Clusters to Watch

 

Phoenix, AZ

Madrid-based ROIS, the CDMO arm of ROVI, said April 1 it plans to add U.S.-based sterile production capacity by acquiring a 370,000-square-foot Phoenix manufacturing site from Bristol Myers Squibb.  ROIS plans to install an Optima pre-filled syringe (PFS) isolator line in a segregated non-potent area in 2027, which is projected to add ~65–70 million PFS capacity annually once operational. The U.S. facility will be equipped for commercial-scale sterile fill-finish and packaging across vials, PFS and cartridges. Also, cancer drug developer Breakthru Medicine emerged from stealth mode in January, closing on $60 million in Series A VC financing. Breakthru is developing a molecular glue platform, as well as a pipeline of small molecule and ADC candidates.

Regional co-anchors include the downtown 30-acre Phoenix Bioscience Core, home to Arizona’s three public research universities—the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, and Arizona State University (ASU). In April, ASU broke ground on a 200,000-square-foot “ASU Health” building in Phoenix that will house the John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering, set to matriculate its inaugural class in August. Another anchor district is the 120-acre Discovery Oasis site, home to Mayo Clinic and MedTech Accelerator, a flagship program of Mayo and Arizona State University Alliance for Health Care. Mayo Clinic is carrying out a $1.9 billion, 1.2 million-square-foot expansion that will increase clinical space at the Phoenix campus by nearly 60% with a new procedural building, a four-floor expansion of the Mayo Clinic Specialty Building, 11 new operating rooms, and two new patient units with 48 additional beds.

Phoenix-area bioscience grew by 8+ million square feet between 2019-25, Mayor Kate Gallego said last year in her State of the City address. The region’s life-sci workforce expanded to 26,000+ by 2024 (Greater Phoenix Economic Council), up 66% since 2015. Greater Phoenix institutions have won 1,470 NIH awards totaling $538.4 million, while inventors have been granted patents totaling 1,470 families.

 

Pittsburgh, PA

The “Steel City” and vicinity have pivoted to life sciences and healthcare since the region’s steel industry began shriveling in the 1970s, with some 95,000 manufacturing jobs lost between 1980-83 alone. A key milestone in Pittsburgh’s life-sci revival should come next year, when ElevateBio and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) are set to open the 185,000-square-foot BioForge Biomanufacturing Center within Hazelwood Green, a former steel mill site along the Monongahela River. ElevateBio, a Waltham, MA-based CDMO for advanced therapies, will occupy 70% of the BioForge site as anchor tenant and a scientific partner for Pitt by operating BaseCamp Pittsburgh, a 125,000-square-foot commercial gene and cell therapy biomanufacturing hub.

Among home-grown companies, Peptilogics in March launched its pivotal Phase II/II RETAIN registration trial (NCT07214311) assessing its lead program of its first-in-class anti-biofilm drug candidate PLG0206 as an irrigation solution to treat prosthetic joint infections. Peptilogics last year completed an oversubscribed $78 million Series B2 financing whose proceeds are funding the trial. Pittsburgh is one of the Top 20 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) identified last November by Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center as “America’s Entrepreneurial Growth Engines,” a report that included three other regions listed here: Atlanta, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Richmond, VA.

Pittsburgh’s life-sci efforts won national attention in February, when members of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology visited BioForge and the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Biological and Chemical Innovation Cloud Lab at the AI Science Foundry, which enables AI-guided autonomous research within and across biology, chemistry, and metals and alloys. According to Pittsburgh Life Sciences Alliance, the region has a life-sci workforce of 22,268, a lab/life-sci space inventory of 1.7 million square feet, and finished last year with $247 million in VC raised over 15 deals during 2025.

 

Greater Richmond, VA

Greater Richmond last year attracted the largest of Virginia’s three multi-billion-dollar biomanufacturing projects announced by pharma giants: Eli Lilly last September announced a $5 billion manufacturing plant just west of Richmond in suburban Goochland County that will be the first-ever dedicated, fully integrated active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and drug product facility for the pharma giant’s bioconjugate platform and monoclonal antibody portfolio. The plant, set to employ 650 people, will manufacture APIs for therapies designed to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases, and other disorders—including ADCs.

The Richmond region’s life-sci anchors include the Alliance for Building Better Medicine, a stakeholder group in Richmond and nearby Petersburg, VA, that promotes advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing, workforce development, and supply chain development; and the 34-acre VA Bio+Tech Park, home to nearly 70 companies, research institutions, and state and federal labs, plus the VA Bio+Tech Center incubator. Also in Richmond is Phlow, a CDMO emphasizing advanced development and manufacturing within the U.S. Last October, the company won inclusion in the FDA’s first Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher (CNPV) Pilot Program when the agency selected Phlow-produced ketamine among nine products for accelerated agency reviews.

Haleon last year committed $54.2 million toward upgrading and expanding its global R&D Center of Excellence, one of three it operates worldwide. The project will also enable the over-the-counter drugmaker to launch a five-year paid internship program with Richmond-based Virginia Commonwealth University and other state schools. Haleon is the former consumer healthcare business of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), spun out in 2022.

Greater Richmond’s numbers, smaller than many emerging regions, are trending positively: The region has won 1,203 NIH awards totaling $707.5 million and generated patents totaling 904 families. According to the Greater Richmond Partnership, the region has a life-sci workforce of 7,650 jobs while its startups raised $80.135 million in VC funding last year.

 

South Carolina

Swedish-based Octapharma, the world’s largest privately owned and independent fractionator of plasma used toward creating hematology, immunotherapy, and critical care treatments, announced plans June 29 to expand within South Carolina by moving its North American headquarters and its 300 jobs from Charlotte, NC, to its suburb of Rock Hill, SC. There, Octapharma plans to build a $1.5 billion combined HQ/advanced manufacturing facility with 1,200 new jobs. In June, GNQ Insilico—which helps precision medicine developers through a platform integrating AI, quantum computing, and multiomics insights at the systems biology level—opened an initial lab at the Clemson University Biomedical Engineering Innovation Campus (CUBEInC), with plans to relocate its headquarters to Greenville from Pleasanton, CA, and base 20-30 people there by year’s end.

Greenville is one of the Palmetto State’s hubs for life-sci activity; others include Charleston, SC, and Sumter, SC. In Columbia, SC, Ritedose, a CDMO specializing in blow-fill-seal (BFS) technology and generic drug manufacturing, has a $17 million, two-phase expansion of its 16,000-square-foot cGMP laboratory coming on line later this year.

According to life-sci industry group SCbio, South Carolina has a life-sci workforce of 63,725 people and saw $63.1 million in bioscience VC raised in 2023 (latest available figure), with Medical University of South Carolina launching two funds totaling $30 million last year to help grow life-sci and healthcare companies. James Chappell, PhD, SCbio’s president and CEO, acknowledges the state needs more lab space for startups. SCbio hopes to meet that need by partnering with a developer—but that challenge could be met if any of several life-sci employers proceed with new or expanded facility projects now in the works but not yet disclosed.

 

Utah

Salt Lake City is home to AI-based drug developer Recursion, which is making news beyond its pipeline. In May, Recursion-supported accelerator Altitude Lab—SLC is an average 4,327 feet above sea level—announced that its portfolio companies had raised more than $205 million in early-stage funding since its launch in 2020.

Two of those companies raised Series A rounds last year: Peel Therapeutics garnered $20 million toward development of PEEL-224, an optimized TOP1 inhibitor, while Rebel Medicine collected $7.5 million to help develop its non-opioid pain candidate Alevatrix, a bupivacaine reformulation. As for Recurison, the company in May reported encouraging initial safety and PK data in its Phase I/II DAHLIA trial (NCT06678659) of RBM39 degrader REC-1245, a candidate vs. solid tumors and lymphoma, and dosed its first patient in a Phase I ENLYGHT trial (NCT07517198) assessing another cancer-fighting candidate, REC-4539, one designed to target epigenetic drivers.

In March, VC firm Portal Innovations announced plans to expand into Salt Lake City, where it will establish “Woodbine Labs, Powered by Portal,” a 30,000-square-foot incubator set to open in the second quarter of 2027, and create a fund to support early-stage life sciences and biotech startups. Statewide industry group BioUtah is supporting Portal, whose new facility would nurture startups spinning out of the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

Outside the Salt Lake City region, biotech manufacturing tools and services company Cytiva has completed an expansion of its Logan, UT, facility—namely a new animal-derived component-free (ADCF) liquid media expansion facility (A1X)—that effectively doubles its liquid media production capacity, a project designed to support supply chain continuity for customers relying on the company for their cell culture needs.