Novartis has opened a new 10,000-square-foot radioligand therapy (RLT) manufacturing facility in Carlsbad, California. The facility is part of the company’s previously announced planned $23-billion investment over five years in US-based infrastructure to ensure that all key Novartis medicines for US patients will be made in the United States. In all, Novartis expects to invest nearly $50 billion in its US operations over the next five years (as reported on November 10, 2025), including the $23-billion investment announced earlier this year (2025).  

The Carlsbad facility has been filed with the US Food and Drug Administration as an additional US point of supply, and commercial manufacturing may begin once approval is granted. The Carlsbad facility is the company’s third US RLT manufacturing site, which also includes sites for RTL manufacturing in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Millburn, New Jersey, which the company has recently expanded. The company is also planning to build two new RTL manufacturing sites in Florida and Texas.  

As part of increasing its US footprint, In addition to increasing RTL manufacturing, the company is also moving forward with other projects in R&D and manufacturing that it announced earlier this year (April 2025). The company plans to establish a $1.1-billion biomedical research hub in San Diego, California, its second global R&D hub in the US. The new complex, expected to open between 2028 and 2029, will serve as the center of the Novartis West Coast Biomedical Research presence, complementing existing hubs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Basel, Switzerland. 

The company also plans to build four new manufacturing facilities in soon-to-be-determined states, including three that will make biologic drug substances, drug products, device assembly and packaging, and one facility that will make chemical drug substances, oral solids dosage forms, and packaging;   

Source: Novartis