Tennessee comes equipped to grow its healthcare and medical footprint.
The heartbeat of healthcare in Tennessee is stronger than ever.
Tennessee, which has seen $855 million in capital investment and over 6,000 new job commitments in the healthcare and life sciences industries since 2019, has earned its reputation as a leading medical hub in the southeastern United States. The state has been No. 1 in the Southeast for medical equipment and supplies for two decades and is also the top employer in surgical appliance and supplies manufacturing in the region.
A success story for homebrewed biotech and medical manufacturing in Tennessee can be found in Nashville-based contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) August Bioservices, which produces sterile injectables for pharmaceutical and biotech clients that specialize across a broad range of treatment areas (metabolic disease, infectious disease, critical care and oncology, to name a few). The company is nearly done with a Nashville site expansion that’s brought an investment of over $60 million.
Manufacturing Medicine for Scale
“We find that Tennessee is really an ideal place for us to build and scale a business like the one that we founded here,” said August Bioservices CEO Jenn Adams. “The state has been very supportive of advanced manufacturing and life sciences investment in general. Nashville in particular, for our business, offers a really good combination of infrastructure, workforce availability and central geographic access. Tennessee offers a business environment that has really enabled us to move quickly and to invest kind of bullishly in growth. It’s a good place for biotech.”
“We find that Tennessee is really an ideal place for us to build and scale a business like the one that we founded here. The state has been very supportive of advanced manufacturing and life sciences investment in general.”
— Jenn Adams, CEO, August Bioservices
The CDMO acquired its site in 2020 and has expanded over several phases, recently adding a new building to its legacy structure that was designed around large-scale, high-speed manufacturing equipment. Syringe filling has already been released for fully qualified production at the campus, which will see the same for vial filling in July 2026.
“We view ourselves as kind of a pioneer,” said Adams about August Bioservices’ success. “We were here first, but the state is getting exposure through us because our clients are biotech and biopharma companies that get a glimpse of what’s going well here when they visit us. We’ve also had a really good partnership with the providers of utilities in the state. That’s very important for a business like ours—our whole job is to make sure that, when we make pharmaceuticals in this facility, we know that they are sterile.”
Since August Bioservices started six years ago, capacity at its facilities has increased by a factor of 15. Adams says having a state-of-the-art facility and equipment has allowed the CDMO to increase that capacity and serve larger commercial programs. When the new syringe filler was launched, more units were made in one month than had been made in the preceding five years. A similar arc in productivity is expected for the launch of the vial filler at the facility this summer.
Adams notes that there remains greenfield space on the Nashville campus, and that it takes a few years from the time that they purchase the equipment necessary to manufacture their products until it meets Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)standards and is released for production.
“We have to know three years in advance what those clients will need,” Adams said. “When we think about planning forward for capacity, we do it with all those things in mind. We plan to continue to attract and develop top-tier talent. We plan to continue to invest in our campus here, and we plan to continue to partner with clients that we are invested in relative to the programs that we serve for them, so that we are part of the solution to the mismatch between needed capacity and that which is available.”
A Strong U.S. Healthcare Supply Chain
August Bioservices and other companies of its kind in Nashville are well served by the strong local workforce, fed by academic teaching institutions like Vanderbilt University. In Tennessee overall, companies operating in the healthcare, bioscience and medical manufacturing fields are supported by the people and work coming out of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
The Volunteer State has also exemplified efforts to expand domestic production of critically needed medical and healthcare products. USAntibiotics, based in Bristol, Tennessee, is the only U.S.-owned manufacturer of Amoxicillin and Amoxicillin Clavulanate. The antibiotic manufacturer was salvaged in a 2021 acquisition by Jackson Healthcare when the company faced bankruptcy and potential closure. Notably, Jackson Healthcare was founded in 2000 by businessman and 2026 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson.
Nonprofit member organization Life Science Tennessee works to connect industry, academia and government to advance the state’s life sciences sector. The organization strengthens relationships among stakeholders, advocates for policies that support a thriving life sciences ecosystem and helps create pathways for academic medical research to reach patients.
“Tennessee is well positioned to help secure a strong and safe domestic manufacturing supply chain because of its long history as a manufacturing state,” said Life Science Tennessee Executive Director Abby Trotter.
“We do some manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry already,” she added. “We certainly do a lot of manufacturing in the medical device industry. Our culture and incentives are exactly right to support expanded pharmaceutical manufacturing. It’s terrific to have a company like August Bioservices demonstrating that for the world to see. The beautiful thing about onshoring pharmaceutical manufacturing is, yes, it is happening all over the country, and it is already happening right here in Tennessee.”
Tennessee values good science, said Trotter, a fact corroborated by how much is spent on growing it: Tennessee spends nearly $1.2 billion annually in academic R&D. About 75% of research that takes place in Tennessee institutions is biosciences-related.
Life Science Tennessee also operates the Life Science Tennessee Foundation, which offers programming to startups looking to commercialize their technology and mentorship for companies aiming to bring their technology to market.
Metro Nashville Leadership
Other medical and healthcare companies making a name for themselves in Tennessee include regenerative medicine and tissue engineering company Lynch Biologics in Franklin and medical device company Nissha Medical Technologies (NMT), which announced last year that it would relocate its engineering operations to Nashville and share R&D incubator space at Vanderbilt University’s Center of Excellence. NMT, headquartered in Buffalo, New York, develops and designs endoscopic tools.
Notably, Tennessee is home to one of the world’s largest hospital companies, Nashville-headquartered HCA Healthcare. According to HCA Healthcare’s March 2026 annual impact report, the healthcare system comprises 190 hospitals across locations in 19 U.S. states and the United Kingdom. The HCA Healthcare Research Institute, its multispecialty research arm, currently has 54 research sites and 523 active studies.
