Biogen commits $2 billion to expand NC’s RTP campuses amid pharma tariff threat
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- Biogen commits $2 billion to expand RTP campuses in Wake and Durham counties.
- Investment funds gene-therapy upgrades, AI automation and drug fill-finish sites.
- Biogen joins pharma firms boosting U.S. output amid 2025 tariff threat concerns.
Biogen plans to beef up its Research Triangle Park operations with $2 billion in new local spending, the company announced Monday.
The investment would go toward growing the drugmaker’s facilities across two Triangle campuses — in Wake and Durham counties — where Biogen produces treatments for multiple sclerosis among other conditions. Biogen has committed to expand select gene-targeting therapies, while adding fill‑finish facilities and artificial intelligence and automation upgrades.
“With this investment, we will modernize and expand our manufacturing capability to enable our pipeline and provide resilient patient supply,” Biogen head of pharmaceutical operations and technology Nicole Murphy said in a statement.
Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts., Biogen is one the world’s 50 biggest drugmakers. North Carolina is home to its largest manufacturing footprint; the company currently has seven Triangle-area factories and plans to open an eighth later this year.
Since arriving in North Carolina in 1995, Biogen says it has invested $10 billion in its Triangle facilities. Its older campus is on the Wake County side of Research Triangle Park, and it added a second location on the Durham side of RTP in 2015 when it acquired the pharmaceutical company Eisai.
Biogen entered this year as Durham County’s 23rd biggest employer and has more than 1,500 workers between its two RTP campuses — plus around 400 contractors.
The company did not share how many jobs its new investment is expected to create. In January, it made an undisclosed number of layoffs in its research division, the industry outlet Fierce BioTech reported.
“While it’s too soon to say how this [investment] will impact job growth, it will help us prepare for the advancement of our late-stage pipeline,” Biogen spokesperson Natalia Hinch told The News & Observer.
Biogen’s investment promise and tariffs
Biogen’s latest commitment comes amid ongoing tariff threats by President Donald Trump, who last week discussed levying 200% tariffs on pharmaceutical products.
Drugmakers have also increased U.S. manufacturing spending since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global supply chains, with Eli Lilly, Fujifilm, and Novo Nordisk among the pharmaceutical giants to announce new facilities in North Carolina since 2020.
“It would be naive to think that tariffs do not play any role,” said Laura Rowley, vice president of life science economic development at the NC Biotechnology Center. “But I also think that it can be problematic to assume that no manufacturing was happening in North Carolina prior to these tariffs, especially whenever we talk about biomanufacturing.”
This year, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, and Merck have each pledged U.S. spending increases, in moves some say are designed to avoid potential tariffs.
In Biogen’s statement Monday, Murphy said, “our manufacturing footprint in the United States has played a critical role in Biogen’s history and success.”
This story was originally published July 21, 2025 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Biogen commits $2 billion to expand NC’s RTP campuses amid pharma tariff threat."
