AstraZeneca has announced the opening of a new $1-billion global strategic research and development (R&D) center, in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The center is part of the company’s previously announced $50-billion investment in the US in research and development and manufacturing by 2030, which was announced in July 2025. 

The R&D center will be home to nearly 2,000 researchers and scientists advancing the company’s oncology, cell therapy, chronic disease. and rare-disease pipeline. The 570,000-square-foot, 18-story site includes 10 floors of interconnecting laboratories and integrates robotics, continuous automation, and agentic AI.  

The US is a large part of the company’s goal to reach overall annual revenues of $80 billion by 2030. In addition to its new R&D center in Cambridge, its $50-billion multi-year investment plan includes:  

• A $4.5-billion active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing facility in Charlottesville, Virginia, which = will produce drug substances for AstraZeneca’s weight-management and metabolic portfolio, including an oral GLP-1, baxdrostat, oral PCSK9 products, and combination small-molecule products;  

• A $300-million manufacturing facility in Rockville, Maryland, for clinical and commercial supply, initially focused on manufacturing T-cell therapies for clinical supply; 

• A facility expansion in Frederick, Maryland, for commercial manufacturing capacity to enable increased supply of existing medicines and production across the company’s rare disease portfolio, expected to be operational in 2029; 

• A new clinical-scale manufacturing facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which will be fully operational by 2029; 

• A specialty manufacturing expansion in Coppell, Texas, with an investment of $445 million, which will double the production of Lokelma (sodium zirconium cyclosilicate), a drug for treating hyperkalemia (high levels of potassium in the blood);    

• A cell-therapy manufacturing facility in Tarzana, California, the details of which have not yet been announced;  

• A continuous manufacturing expansion in Mount Vernon, Indiana, the details of which have not yet been announced;     

• New sites to supply clinical trials; and     

• Growing research and development investment.  

Source: AstraZeneca