The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) has announced plans to award $50 million in grant funding to Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech Hubs) in several states meant to boost biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes which are essential to national security and competitiveness.

EDA is investing in regions of the U.S. it contends have the “talent and assets to become global leaders in the critical technologies of the future,” according to the announcement.  

Among EDA’s selected Tech Hubs is the Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Tech Hub (Virginia) which is slated to get $16 million in funding to “develop and scale advanced, AI-enabled domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing.”

EDA is also making an investment in the Kansas City BioSecure Manufacturing Tech Hub (Kansas, Missouri), which will receive $34 million to “modernize manufacturing processes, strengthen and retool domestic supply chains, and accelerate the translation of biologic discoveries into scalable, resilient, and agile U.S. production.”

In a May letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Senators Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) and Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) voiced their support for the Kansas City BioSecure Manufacturing Tech Hub’s EDA grant application — a bi-state region stretching from McPherson, Kansas to Columbia, Missouri that they argued will accelerate the adoption of innovative biomanufacturing technologies and rebuild America’s domestic supply chains.

“Today, 78 percent of U.S. biotech firms rely on Chinese contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) such as WuXi Biologics for development and manufacturing,” the senators wrote. “America urgently needs domestic alternatives, and the Kansas City region is prepared to lead. Unlike other regions, Kansas City does not need to build biomanufacturing capacity from scratch. It already has unmatched infrastructure, including the largest concentration of animal health and nutrition companies in the world.”

Of the $34 million in funding, $15 million will go to MRI Global to retrofit a facility into an advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing center, as well as $3.8 million to help secure FDA approval and expand adoption of advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies.

In addition, $6.2 million is earmarked for BioNexus Kansas City to establish an end-to-end bioservices network capable of competing with China’s bioservices industry — and $2.8 million to train workers in AI and advanced biomanufacturing — while $5.5 million will go to Kansas Manufacturing Solutions to strengthen domestic supply chains.

Other investment in the Midwest

In July 2024, EDA awarded grant funding of approximately $51 million to Heartland BioWorks — led by the Applied Research Institute in Bloomington, Indiana — which “aims to transform Central Indiana into a global leader in biotechnology and biomanufacturing by increasing the region’s capacity to make and deploy life-saving medicines.”

According to Heartland BioWorks, Indiana leads the nation in pharmaceutical exports and is the only state to manufacture all three COVID-19 vaccines. The goal of the Tech Hub is to strengthen national security and solidify Indiana’s position as a global leader in biomanufacturing.

With EDA funding and a $6 million investment from Eli Lilly, the Applied Research Institute announced plans last year for a 20,000-square-foot Heartland BioWorks headquarters in Indianapolis. The facility will serve as a workforce training and innovation center as well as the headquarters for the Heartland BioWorks Consortium, a national collaboration of industry, academia, and government partners.

“The 31 Tech Hubs, representing communities across America, will lead a new era of technological innovation,” according to an April 2025 report to Congress from the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB). “If the United States is going to capture the opportunities that biotechnology and biomanufacturing present, Tech Hubs across the country will lead the way. The future of biotechnology is local, but the impact will be global.”

NSCEB found that the U.S. lacks the biomanufacturing capacity to ensure it maintains global dominance over China in biotech. With China aggressively pursuing a strategy to become the world’s biotech leader, the U.S. government must invest a minimum of $15 billion over the next five years, the commission contends. 

The Tech Hubs program, created under the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 as the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs program, was authorized to receive $10 billion over five years. However, Congress has so far only appropriated about $1 billion to the program.