AstraZeneca puts more than $1 billion into Massachusetts research

AstraZeneca has opened a major research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of a plan to invest more than $1 billion in the state and increase its local workforce by over 50% in the coming years. The new site, in Kendall Square, will work alongside a nearby genomics facility and eventually house nearly 2,000 researchers and scientists. Its job is not drug manufacturing: it is the earlier, riskier work of finding and developing potential treatments for cancer, chronic and rare diseases, and newer approaches such as cell therapy. The move is part of AstraZeneca’s broader $50 billion US investment plan, and shows why clusters such as Cambridge matter to drugmakers: they put companies close to specialized talent, academic research, hospitals, and biotech partners.