Pharmaceutical companies in Houston: a small drug industry built around chemicals, isotopes and the Medical Center

This page is for people who want to know which drug companies operate in Houston: chemists and operators looking for work, contract manufacturers and suppliers looking for customers, and sellers deciding whether the market is worth a territory. The short answer is that it's small today, specialized, and gaining one very large new employer.

The Census count

County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, NAICS 3254 (Pharmaceutical and Medicine Manufacturing), Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX Metro Area (CBSA 26420):

The Census Bureau withholds every class from 100 employees up for Houston, so the 4 is the total less the published cells. By county, Harris has 29 establishments and 1,276 employees, Fort Bend 7 and 813, Montgomery 6 and 216, and Brazoria 3, with an employee figure the Bureau published but flagged as high-noise (its confidentiality noise moved the value by 5% or more).

By six-digit code, 23 make finished dose pharmaceuticals (978 employees), 13 make medicinal chemicals and botanicals (297), 6 make biologics and 4 make in-vitro diagnostics; the last two employee totals are high-noise.

Each figure is a count of locations with paid staff, not of companies; businesses without employees are excluded. In Houston the code also misses most of the life sciences workforce: the same data shows 167 drug wholesale establishments (NAICS 424210) with 3,870 employees and 92 biotechnology R&D establishments (NAICS 541714) with 877.

What FDA's file shows

FDA's Drug Establishments Current Registration Site (DECRS) is a daily-updated list of sites registered to make or process drugs for the US market. Our count for the metro's counties from the download on 30 October 2026:

More than half of Houston's manufacturing registrations belong to industrial gas and welding supply companies registered to make medical gases. The drug and isotope registrants include Lonza Houston (Houston), AMPAC Fine Chemicals Texas (La Porte), LGM Pharma Solutions (Rosenberg), Kavis Pharma (Sugar Land), Telix IsoTherapeutics Group (Angleton) and Iso-Tex Diagnostics (Alvin). The five PET producers are SOFIE, P.E.T.NET Houston, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and RadioMedix (Humble). Treat each entry as the company's own filing rather than an approval.

The new employer: Lilly

Eli Lilly's third-quarter 2026 results release, filed with the SEC on 29 October 2026, lists "Lilly breaks ground in Houston, one of ten U.S. manufacturing sites announced since 2020", and the same release mentions "new manufacturing expansions in Texas and Virginia". None of this shows up in the 2023 Census figures, so treat the counts above as the starting point. For Lilly's size and rank, see the largest pharmaceutical companies.

Listed drugmakers headquartered in Houston

EDGAR shows 11 listed companies in SIC codes 2833 to 2836 with a business address in the metro. All are small; checked in each latest 10-K:

Coya Therapeutics ($7.9 million of 2025 revenue), Moleculin Biotech, CNS Pharmaceuticals and Decoy Therapeutics also give Houston headquarters on their 10-K covers. With headcounts this size, the chief executive or chief operating officer usually signs for outside services.

Checking a Houston drug company

• Texas licences. FDA lists the Texas Department of State Health Services as the state agency that licenses wholesale drug distributors.
• FDA history. FDA's Data Dashboard shows inspections, warning letters and recalls by firm.
• The local network. BioHouston runs life science events, the Greater Houston Partnership is the region's chamber of commerce and economic development organization, with a member directory, and the Texas Medical Center campus is the address Marker and Decoy give on their 10-K covers.

Job seekers should read the size table first: with 32 of 46 sites under 20 employees, most openings in drug manufacturing come from a handful of employers, plus whatever Lilly's new site adds.

Prospecting Houston's drug sites

Worked example: a GMP cleaning contractor

Illustrative example. The contractor and its prices are invented; the counts come from FDA's registration file.

Bayou Clean Rooms (bayoucleanrooms.example) cleans and disinfects controlled areas to GMP standards.

1. Build the list. 20 manufacturing registrations that aren't gas suppliers, 8 packagers and 6 testing labs: 34 sites.
2. Do the arithmetic. Reaching the facilities or quality lead at 70% gives 24 conversations. If a quarter agree to a walk-through, that's 6, and 2 monthly contracts at $8,000 bring $192,000 a year.
3. Add the next wave. The 92 biotechnology R&D establishments and Lilly's construction-stage site come later, with different buyers.

Finding who owns cleaning at each site is the slow part; Bebop researches each company in a list and suggests the person to contact.

Subject: Cleanroom cleaning at [site name]

Hi [first name],

[Company] is registered with FDA for [operation] at the [town] site.

Facilities managers at registered sites often tell us their cleaning vendor is fine until an auditor asks for the logs.

We clean classified areas across the Houston metro with documented SOPs, training records and disinfectant rotation. Would a free walk-through next week help you compare?

[Your name]
[Phone number]

Next step: compare the other big Texas metro in the Dallas pharmaceutical market report.