NH Business Notebook: This lung’s for you

Human organ developer United Therapeutics buys former Budweiser plant in Merrimack

United Therapeutics has purchased the former Anheuser-Busch property. The company currently operates a research and development center in Manchester. (Jeffrey Hastings)

A company that is developing human lungs and other organs for transplant just bought an old brewery.

The news last week that United Therapeutics purchased the former Anheuser-Busch brewery site in Merrimack for $47 million represents a major boost to the town, which lost one of its biggest employers when Anheuser-Busch announced it was closing the 221 Daniel Webster Highway plant as part of a restructuring.

The long-term significance of the deal lies in what United Therapeutics will be doing with the property. Work by the 80 scientists and other professionals at the biotech company’s 80,000-square-foot space at 100 Commercial St., includes developing 3D-printed organ scaffolds used to make lungs.

United Therapeutics was founded in 1996 by Martine Rothblatt, whose mission was to develop a cure for her daughter’s pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare lung and heart disease. It employs about 1,400 people and operates locations all over the world, including nearly a dozen sites in the United States.

The company is one of the founding members of the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI), the nonprofit consortium established by inventor Dean Kamen in 2017 that aims to make the Manchester area the global hub for biofabrication.

The effort is backed by nearly $500 million from federal government funding and in-kind support from more than 200 member organizations. ARMI is currently prepping 80,000 square feet at 150 Dow St. in the Millyard for a biomanufacturing facility for making human cells, tissues and organs. It will also include a workforce development training center.

Thus far, the Millyard ARMI efforts have been dedicated to research and development, with the expectation that large-scale manufacturing will be conducted elsewhere.

United Therapeutics has been scouting for expansion space for at least a couple of years. In December 2024, the company announced it had dropped plans to buy a 350-acre site on Hackett Hill in Manchester, saying the property was too small.

“This is long-term planning for us,” Dewey Steadman, head of investor relations for the Maryland-based company, told NHBR at the time. Securing real estate is the longest part of the process for the company, which aims to have space ready in time to meet future manufacturing needs, “whether it’s the existing pharmaceutical side of the business or it’s the high tech.”

After news leaked of the land buy, first reported by Jeffrey Hastings for Patch, United Therapeutics issued a brief statement but revealed no details about its plans for the Merrimack site.

“This acquisition builds on United Therapeutics’ existing presence in the region, which includes extensive lab space in Manchester’s Millyard and a corporate hangar at the Concord Municipal Airport, as well as 45 Hartwell in Lexington, MA, acquired in 2025,” the company said.

The breakthrough for the large-scale development of human organs and tissue will be determined less by science than by creating the needed infrastructure — including housing, training and a more streamlined federal regulation process — proponents have said in panel discussions at local biotech gatherings over the past decade since ARMI was founded.

In its recently filed second quarter report, United Therapeutics (Nasdaq: UTHR) reported total revenues of 2026 of $783.3 million, down 2% in the second quarter of 2025, and net income of $333 million.

The company said it has clinical trials underway or being planned for liver, kidney, heart and lung products, and the launch of two facilities for xeno-organ production — the process of growing or genetically modifying animal organs, primarily from pigs — in Minnesota and Texas.

Rothblatt has a personal stake in the creation of human lungs: Her daughter, Jenesis, may need a lung transplant someday, she said during a 2018 interview at the Millyard.

Jenesis Rothblatt was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension at age 5. An experimental drug United Therapeutics licensed from Glaxo Wellcome led to a successful treatment.

“She’s not a person who will be able to run or anything like that or do stairs, but she works at United Therapeutics,” Rothblatt said. “She has lots of friends. I think she has a good life.”