The importance of a homegrown biomanufacturing workforce to North Carolina’s swiftly growing life sciences industry was a consistent theme during a recent press tour of the state attended by Fierce Pharma, with this message resonating across universities, economic development centers and the very plants producing medicines for major companies such as Eli Lilly, Fujifilm Biotechnologies and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
In recent years, North Carolina has received a massive influx of life sciences interest—and accompanying investments—with Biogen just last week setting aside $2 billion to build new manufacturing facilities and upgrade existing campuses in the Tar Heel State.
Underpinning the state’s growth in the field are organizations like the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, a life-sci-focused economic development group working across all levels of education—plus state and local government—to recruit companies, secure grants and, perhaps most importantly, help facilitate the sort of workforce training and certification necessary to keep biopharmas and related businesses humming.
The work of the biotechnology center, and that of the many local organizations, schools and companies it collaborates with, is clearly paying off for the state—and North Carolinian job seekers, too.
In 2024, 25 life sciences companies announced projects in North Carolina, according to a presentation shared during a visit to the biotechnology center this summer. Over that same 12-month stretch, more than 4,500 new life sciences jobs and $10.8 billion in investment dollars were also committed in the state.
All told, there are currently more than 830 life sciences companies employing more than 75,000 people in North Carolina, not including support services like law firms and catering, Doug Edgeton, president and CEO of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, said in an interview following the June press tour. As of early 2022, those figures stood at around 775 companies and about 68,000 jobs.
Cultivating talent
Developing local pharma manufacturing talent to sustain that influx of companies and investments to North Carolina has been a major focus of the biotechnology center and its educational compatriots over the years.
North Carolina—which was previously buoyed by the production, textile and tobacco industries—has a “rich history of manufacturing,” Edgeton pointed out. Through dedicated training and certification programs, North Carolina has been able to redirect that local manufacturing acumen toward production jobs in biopharmaceuticals and other related fields, he explained.
Those efforts span age and experience levels, with the biotechnology center offering, for instance, a workforce development program called MOVE dedicated to helping transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses receive the training, support and connections necessary to pursue a life sciences career.
Edgeton also pointed to early outreach programs through the center’s Pharmaceutical Services Network, which provides lab- and facility-focused training through East Carolina University and Pitt Community College. Together, the center and schools have developed a two-day training program for selected graduating high school students, Edgeton explained. Students can take the course for free and, if they pass, are guaranteed interviews with local companies like CDMO juggernaut Thermo Fisher.
The program reflects a growing trend in which certain pharmaceutical manufacturing roles are viewed as more akin to a technical trade that shouldn’t have a high barrier to entry.
To be eligible for the North Carolina training initiative, students must also complete certain career readiness assessments in applied math, graphic literacy and workplace documentation.
In 2025, more than 20 students got jobs through the biotechnology-center-supported program, Edgeton said.
The fruits of those workforce development efforts and others within the state were apparent as Fierce toured a trio of North Carolina production facilities earlier this year.
At Thermo Fisher’s Greenville plant, the CDMO employs some 2,000 workers out of a total 8,000 across the state, representatives for the company said during Fierce’s site visit.
The Greenville facility forms Thermo Fisher’s flagship sterile fill-finish site in North America and leverages several innovative approaches to production like continuous manufacturing, digital twins and virtual-reality-powered training, the representatives said.
Over at Eli Lilly’s parenteral products and devices plant in Concord, the company boasts a workforce of around 750 people, roughly 75% of whom are local to North Carolina, the site head, Rosa Manso, told Fierce during a tour of the facility. The facility still has room to grow its head count and also relies on high-speed lines, automation, robotics and automated guided vehicles to streamline the production process, she said.
The story was much the same at Fujifilm Biotechnologies’ gargantuan cell culture facility in Holly Springs, where the CDMO currently employs more than 500 people and is aiming to reach a headcount of 700 by the end of 2025, according to Laurie Braxton, senior vice president and head of North Carolina operations at Fujifilm Biotechnologies.
Fujifilm is filling out its employee roster in Holly Springs with help from nearby institutions like North Carolina State University’s Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center, and roughly 80% of the plant’s current workforce is local, Braxton explained during a tour of the up-and-coming facility.
More than manufacturing
Despite much of the biotechnology center’s focus—and that of the state— historically centering on pharmaceutical biomanufacturing, that isn’t all North Carolina has to offer to the life sciences industry, the center’s CEO Edgeton explained.
Over time, the center has also helped direct investments and garner interest around fields like agricultural biotechnology, contract research and cell and gene therapy, he said.
As the cell and gene field started heating up in the early 2000s, “we made a conscious effort in our recruitment to focus on the assets of North Carolina’s cell and gene therapy strengths,” Edgeton said. “So, while Boston may have a leg up, we are very close behind.”
On that front, the center’s former president, Charles Hamner, Ph.D.—who passed away at age 90 on July 4—made an early effort to recruit AAV gene therapy pioneer Jude Samulski, Ph.D., to the state, Edgeton noted.
Supported by loans from the NC Biotechnology Center, Samulski would go on to help create the North Carolina-based gene therapy companies Bamboo Therapeutics and AskBio (formerly Asklepios BioPharmaceutical), which were later acquired by Pfizer and Bayer, respectively.
Edgeton did acknowledge that recent setbacks and hurdles in the field are “shying investors away” from gene therapy at the moment, but he stressed that the biotechnology center is still seeing plenty of interest in personalized medicines overall.
As for North Carolina’s contract research pedigree, Edgeton referred to North Carolina as “the home of that [industry],” pointing to the birth of Quintiles—which would later merge with IMS Health and become IQVIA—out of work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by biostatistics professor and Quintiles founder Dennis Gillings.
More recently, the biotechnology center has turned its attention to the medical device industry, too, with a scene for that sector now emerging in Charlotte, Edgeton added.
As all those new life sciences projects continue to pour into North Carolina, the pace of the local industry’s growth doesn’t look ready to let up any time soon.
Biogen's recent $2 billion commitment is part of a bigger drug production onshoring push among biopharma companies, which started gaining traction during the COVID-19 pandemic and had a major resurgence this year amid threats of pharmaceutical import tariffs under the Trump administration.
In April, Regeneron inked a 10-year, $3 billion deal with Fujifilm Biotechnologies to secure U.S. biologics capacity at the CDMO's upcoming site in Holly Springs. And, prior to that, Amgen in December said it would spend $1 billion to build a new drug substance production facility in the same North Carolina town where Fujifilm's plant is.
And shortly after revealing a $50 billion investment in its U.S. operations, Roche in May said that $700 million of that sum would be put toward a new facility for its Genentech unit in the same town.
“We are still getting so much interest from companies looking to onshore or secure their supply chain,” Edgeton said. “So, I think we’re still going to see growth.”