Biotech companies in New Jersey: a pharma state with a cell therapy supply chain

This report is for job seekers, investors, partners and suppliers looking at New Jersey's biotech companies rather than its big pharma campuses. The two overlap, so the page separates them: Census establishment counts for biotech labs and biologics plants, the listed biotechs from their filings, and the FDA registrations that show where cell and biologic products are made and stored.

How many biotech companies are in New Jersey

County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, New Jersey, NAICS 541714 (biotech research and development) and 325414 (biological product manufacturing):

Research labs account for 167 establishments and 10,031 employees, biologics plants for 22 establishments and 2,442 employees. These are establishments with paid staff, not companies, and they exclude the self-employed.

Why a pharma state ranks ninth

Most of New Jersey's drug industry sits in other codes. Big pharma plants are usually pharmaceutical preparation manufacturing (325412), research campuses that do chemistry rather than biotechnology may be coded 541715, and the many headquarters and commercial offices are classed by function. So the 189 here are the biotech labs and biologics plants, not the industry.

The unpublished classes are suppressed in the biologics manufacturing code. Two features stand out: very few establishments of 50 to 99 people (6), and a cluster of 100 to 249 (12). In the R&D code alone, 6 labs have 250 to 499 employees.

The listed biotechs

SEC EDGAR lists 45 listed companies with a New Jersey business address in SIC 2834 (pharmaceutical preparations, 40) and 2836 (biological products, 5). The diversified giants lead: Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick ($94,193 million of revenue for the year ended 28 December 2025), Merck in Rahway ($65,011 million) and Bristol Myers Squibb in Princeton ($48,194 million). The biotechs below them, from their latest annual reports:

Employees as of 31 December 2025 unless dated; blank where we didn't take a figure from the filing. Rocket's EDGAR address is in New York and Champions Oncology's in Baltimore, but both 10-K covers give New Jersey. ANI Pharmaceuticals has a Princeton address in EDGAR but a Minnesota headquarters in its 10-K, so it's left out.

Insmed is the outlier: it spent more on R&D ($771.1 million) than it earned in revenue, which often means a large late-stage program and a lot of outsourced clinical work. ADMA, which describes itself as a manufacturer of specialty biologics, is the opposite: mostly manufacturing, very little R&D.

Research money: companies outspend the government

NIH RePORTER shows $469.1 million of NIH awards to 54 New Jersey organizations in fiscal 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), across 780 projects. Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences received $213.1 million and Princeton University $67.0 million. Merck's 10-K reports $15,789 million of R&D in 2025 and Bristol Myers Squibb's $9,951 million. In New Jersey, corporate R&D budgets set the pace, not federal grants.

Companies received 43 NIH awards worth $48.4 million, including PsychoGenics in Paramus ($10.4 million) and Theradex Systems in Princeton ($9.1 million); 32 were small-business (SBIR or STTR) grants.

Where cell and biologic products are made and stored

FDA's biologics registration splits in two. Blood and cell or tissue establishments register with FDA's biologics center, and other biologics makers register as drug establishments.

• Cell and tissue registry: 26 New Jersey establishments are registered for blood stem cell or peripheral blood mononuclear cell products. Besides hospital programs at Hackensack and New Brunswick, they include Minaris Regenerative Medicine in Allendale, Celularity in Florham Park, and storage and logistics firms: SciSafe in Cranbury and East Brunswick, Cryoport Systems in Morris Plains and Infinity BiologiX in Piscataway.
• Drug establishment registry: New Jersey has 329 registrations, 185 with manufacturing operations. Biologics and cell therapy registrants include Legend Biotech USA and Janssen in Raritan, Celgene in Summit, Celltrion in Branchburg, WuXi Biologics in Cranbury and Robbinsville, and Kashiv BioSciences in Piscataway.

Neither registry covers products still in trials, because investigational-only manufacturing doesn't require registration.

Registries and directories

1. State registration. The New Jersey Department of Health requires businesses that distribute prescription or non-prescription drugs or medical devices, including manufacturers, to register, and offers an online verification tool.
2. The association. BioNJ runs a membership directory, a career portal and a purchasing consortium.
3. The incubator. NJEDA's NJ Bioscience Center Incubator in North Brunswick has about 46,000 square feet of wet labs for early-stage companies.

Selling to New Jersey biotechs

Worked example: a regulatory writing firm

Illustrative example. The firm and its rates are invented; the R&D figures come from the filings above.

Ridge Lane Regulatory (ridgelane.example) writes clinical study reports and submission documents.

1. Target R&D-heavy mid-caps. Insmed, PTC, Legend and Rocket together reported $1,783.0 million of 2025 R&D (our sum).
2. Find the submissions. A company preparing a new filing or label expansion needs extra writers for a few months; pipeline tables in the 10-K show which programs are near filing.
3. Do the arithmetic. Two document projects a year at $150,000 each, at three of the four, is $900,000.

Spotting which programs are near filing across a list takes hours per account; Bebop researches each account and drafts the outreach.

For the national ranking, see the largest biotech companies; for the drug manufacturing side of the state, the New Jersey pharmaceutical market report.

Next step: look across the river at biotech companies in New York City.