GxP Insights: US Life Sciences Manufacturing: The New Hubs Taking Shape

Welcome to our monthly industry insights newsletter, tailored for professionals in Medical Devices, Biologics, Cell & Gene Therapy, and Sterile/Aseptic Manufacturing. Each edition delves into a key industry theme, offering expert perspectives and career insights to help you stay ahead.

In the December edition of GxP Insights, we covered the surge in US pharmaceutical manufacturing investment and the companies driving it. This month, we look at where that investment is going beyond the established hubs, focusing on four US states that have attracted significant capital in the past year, what's behind their rise, and what it means for talent and workforce demand.

Where We Are: $582B+ and Still Climbing

Since January 2025, global drugmakers have committed more than $582 billion to US-based manufacturing, R&D, and job creation. A figure that continues to rise. In September 2025, Pfizer committed a further $70 billion to US research, development, and capital projects as part of a pricing agreement with the Trump administration, joining a list that already included Merck ($70B), J&J ($55B+), AstraZeneca ($50B), Roche ($50B), Gilead ($32B), GSK ($30B), Takeda ($30B), BMS ($40B), Novartis ($23B), and Sanofi ($20B).

And in early 2026, the pace has not slowed. In January, Eli Lilly completed its "Lilly in America" quartet by announcing its fourth planned US facility, a $3.5B+ injectables and device manufacturing site in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, rounding out a program that has also placed major facilities in Virginia, Texas, and Alabama. Construction is expected to begin this year.

Established pharma hubs, such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, continue to attract large-scale investment, with major projects under construction or in late planning stages. 

But one of the more notable shifts since last year is the speed at which new manufacturing clusters are forming in states with little prior pharmaceutical manufacturing presence.

The Newcomers: New Clusters Taking Shape

Four US states in particular stand out:

Virginia, A Cluster Built in Months

Virginia is the most dramatic newcomer story in US life sciences; “an overnight success years in the making”, according to some. The state secured over $12.5 billion in pharma manufacturing investment in 2025, with three major projects announced within weeks of each other:

• AstraZeneca, $4.5B, Albemarle County: the new facility will develop and manufacture a broad range of medicines, including weight management, metabolic, and cancer technologies.
• Eli Lilly, $5B, Goochland County: the company’s first dedicated, fully integrated active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and drug product facility for bioconjugates and monoclonal antibodies.
• Merck, $3B, Rockingham County (Elkton): a 400,000 sq ft Centre of Excellence that will include both API and drug product investment supporting small molecule manufacturing and testing.

What makes Virginia distinctive is not just the volume of investment, but what has followed it. 

In late 2025, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Merck signed a $120M Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the state to establish the Virginia Center for Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, a workforce training hub spanning the Richmond-Petersburg-Charlottesville corridor, designed to graduate 2,000–2,500 people per year with industry-aligned credentials and degrees. The state itself invested a further $10M in supporting infrastructure.

This public-private approach to workforce development, building the talent pipeline in parallel with the facilities, is being watched closely as a model for how other states can compete for large-scale pharma investment.

Texas, First Major Pharma Plant, With More to Come

Texas has long had manufacturing scale in other industries, but almost no pharmaceutical manufacturing presence. That is changing. 

Eli Lilly's $6.5B facility at Generation Park in Houston, marking one of the state’s biggest life sciences investments, will produce APIs for orforglipron (Lilly's answer to Novo Nordisk’s GLP-1 pill for obesity) and medicines across Lilly's small molecule portfolio. Construction is expected to be completed in 2030, creating over 4,000 regional construction jobs and more than 615 permanent roles.

In February 2026, Novartis also announced it’s building a new radioligand therapy (RLT) manufacturing facility in Texas as part of its $23B US program. The RLT facility is the company’s fifth in the US and its first manufacturing facility in Texas. And AstraZeneca opened an expanded manufacturing facility in Coppell in late 2025, doubling production capacity at its existing site.

The Texas Medical Center's TMC BioPort biomanufacturing initiative is building the ecosystem infrastructure to support further investment.

Ohio, Industrial Base Repurposed

Ohio is not entirely new to pharma, but the scale and nature of recent investments represent a significant step change.

Amgen's $900M expansion of its New Albany facility, raising its total Ohio commitment to over $1.4B, is focused on biologics manufacturing and builds on a plant that was itself only recently opened. Biologics and small-molecule firm Hikma Pharmaceuticals broke ground on a new pharmaceutical manufacturing and R&D facility in Columbus in 2025, with a further $1B committed by 2030.

The state has responded with deliberate infrastructure investment: new initiatives to train biomanufacturing workers, an expanded Ohio Manufacturing Competency Model to incorporate biomanufacturing, and targeted incentive packages aimed at attracting further projects from the sector.

Alabama, An API Hub in the Making

Alabama barely featured in life sciences manufacturing conversations 18 months ago. But in December 2025, Eli Lilly announced a $6B API facility in Huntsville focused on small molecule synthetic and peptide medicines, including orforglipron. The plant will create 450 permanent jobs, representing the largest initial investment in Alabama’s history. 

Huntsville's culture of advanced manufacturing, rooted in aerospace and defense, is increasingly positioning it as a credible location for complex pharmaceutical production.

What's Driving Investment to Non-Traditional States?

The shift to non-traditional states is not accidental. Several common factors are emerging across the newcomers:

• Shovel-ready sites: Virginia's success was partly built on years of preparation: ~$500M invested in site development before the wave hit, meaning companies could move from expression of interest to groundbreaking in a matter of weeks rather than months.
• Workforce pipeline strategies: States winning large investments are moving quickly to build training programs alongside the facilities, not after them. Virginia's multi-university APM Centre is the most visible example, but Ohio and Texas are developing similar frameworks.
• Business climate and incentives: Business-friendly regulation, competitive tax environments, and proactive state economic development authorities are emerging as significant differentiators, particularly when established hubs are becoming congested and costly.
• Tariff exemption logic: The Trump administration's signal that companies actively building US manufacturing would be protected from pharmaceutical import tariffs created a sharp incentive to make decisions quickly. States that could offer ready-to-go sites were well-placed to capture that urgency.
  
  

The Constraint That Hasn't Changed: Talent

Across all states, established and emerging, workforce availability remains the primary constraint on execution. New facilities demand highly specialized expertise across two distinct phases.

First, the build: 

GMP-experienced construction managers, project engineers, MEP specialists, CQV leads, and commissioning professionals capable of delivering complex, regulated environments on aggressive timelines. 

Then the operation: 

bioprocess and MSAT engineers, automation and digitalization specialists, validation professionals, QA/QC leaders, and experienced manufacturing operations managers.

Both are equally hard to resource, and in many of the newcomer states, both need to be sourced from outside the region as well. This is particularly acute in states without an existing life sciences ecosystem, where companies must import talent or build it from scratch.

The Virginia APM Centre model, co-designed with industry, anchored in community colleges and universities, and timed to deliver graduates when facilities come online, is increasingly being cited as the template other states need to replicate.

As investment concentrates and projects move into execution, the challenge will be less about capital and more about having the right people, in the right places, at the right time.

Live GMP Projects as part of US Manufacturing Expansion

As domestic build programs accelerate, i-Pharm GxP actively supports multiple large-scale construction, commissioning, and manufacturing projects across the East Coast and Midwest.

Our current live contract requirements include:

• CSV Engineer, Michigan (Hybrid)
• CQV Lead, Kankakee, Illinois (Onsite)
• CQV Lead, Virginia (Onsite)
• Senior Validation Consultant, Wilson, North Carolina (Onsite)
• MEP Construction Manager, Lebanon, Indiana (Onsite)
• Automation Project Manager, Virginia (Hybrid)
• Construction Lead, Lebanon, Indiana (Onsite)
• Automation Engineer, Illinois (Remote)
• Piping Project Engineer / Project Manager, Indianapolis, Indiana (Onsite)
• Commissioning & Qualification (C&Q) Lead, Lebanon, Indiana; Huntsville, Alabama, or Richmond, Virginia (Onsite)
• Aseptic Operator (Aseptic SME / Floor Lead), Bedford, Massachusetts (Onsite)

If you’re exploring your next move or would like to become part of our network for upcoming projects, we’d be happy to connect.

Final Thoughts

The US life sciences manufacturing reshoring pledges made in 2025 are now being built. New clusters are forming, not just in the Research Triangle or Greater Philadelphia, but in Virginia's central corridor, Houston's Generation Park, Ohio's Columbus metro, and Huntsville's advanced manufacturing district. Each is at a different stage of maturity, but all share the same structural challenge: building a qualified workforce fast enough to meet the pace of capital deployment.

At i-Pharm GxP, we work alongside the Life Sciences organizations navigating this shift, helping them secure the expertise required to build, validate, and sustain next-generation manufacturing.

If you’d like to discuss opportunities or expertise needs, we’d love to connect.

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