A research lab - the most critical component of the Life Sciences industry's value chain is currently witnessing a paradigm shift in more ways than one. It is also one of the key customer industries for a Laboratory Solutions market. So naturally, changing patterns in this industry shall have trickle down effects on the Providers market too.
Increasing automation, high instrument-reagent integration, new concepts such as meeting spaces for multidisciplinary interaction, modular designs, and open labs are perhaps some of the many emerging trends in laboratory design. Globally, the constant scramble for new blockbuster drugs, revolutionary research technologies, coupled with the development of information technology is keeping demand for new or renovated laboratory spaces steady.
Technology breakthroughs are compressing timelines and speeding up the delivery of research programmes. Despite this, scientists and lab architects emphasize the fostering of interdisciplinary communication, creating highly adaptable and cost efficient research facilities. This also minimizes the sense of isolation and "stand alone" lab culture that has long been the standard for researchers.
Both the industry and academia worldwide are therefore striving to create lab facilities that can service current research needs at the same time provide for future expansions and changes in research techniques. These encourage an exchange of ideas and theories, and more importantly facilities that help recruit and retain scientific resources - all this at the lowest possible project cost and optimum speed!
Such concepts put an emphasis on lab design, layout, equipment planning, laboratory integration and automation. Segments of the laboratory solutions market, which were comparatively less significant in the market earlier are now being pushed centre-stage.
Automated and Virtual Labs
From traditional bench-style research, scientists are moving towards multiplexed research programmes and are using analytical instrumentation-reagent interfaces that reduce experiment time dramatically and to a certain extent also impact the experiment cost.
If one is to look at the some of the factors that affect the way research labs are being planned: automation is clearly emerging as a star strategy when it comes to choosing an option saves costs and helps speed-up delivery of end results.
Lab automation is already creating big efficiencies in some labs; it is expected to reshape research labs across the globe in the next five years taking us to the next level of integration and automation. Drug discovery today already works with reliable automated instruments for design, synthesis, purification, and characterization; formatting and registration; and screening.
Additionally, Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) already into its fourth generation products is also addressing some of the enhanced issues related to decentralized data processing. With research becoming inherently collaborative across countries and continents, the next step in lab automation and scientific computing include groupware, workflow, document management, and collaborative electronic notebook systems (CENS).
Automation has provided a high throughput option to drug discovery. It has also provided rich data sets needed to create computer-based models and simulations that can help scientists predict the way a drug would interact with a target or understand the protein-protein interactions to arrive at potential lead candidates for further research. Computational modeling and simulation have progressed phenomenally over the past five years.
Although the in-silico simulation industry is decades away from completely usurping the wet lab, simulation technologies will succeed primarily through their ability to provide insight into the scope and type of biochemical studies that will be necessary to accurately reach desired conclusions.
It will not be long before research labs shall be virtual centres where researchers around the world can do research without regard to geographical location, interacting with colleagues via electronic means, accessing instruments, sharing data and computational resources, and retrieving information from digital libraries. These "collaboratories" would be designed to enable close ties between scientists in a given research area, promote collaborations involving scientists in diverse areas, accelerate the development and dissemination of basic knowledge, and minimize the time-lag between discovery and application.
Lab-on-a-chip
The demand for faster and cost-effective research tools has also been effective in spurring the miniaturization of the laboratory onto a smaller scale - micro volumes or "laboratory on chip" concepts. From using miniature / micro scale laboratory settings to getting some of the crucial lab experiment steps onto chips - development in the laboratory solutions market has tried to keep pace with the demand for faster and efficient research tools.
Miniaturization of research tools has not only improved performance, speed, and reduced cost. It has improved reproducibility and throughput, reduced reagents consumption, lowered contamination and operator error, and provided the convenience of more parallel and integrated analysis.
The lab-on-a-chip has now been a viable commercialized product for several years, but the number of products introduced should rise dramatically in the future, and reach a staggering number of applications.
It would just be a matter of time when awareness, usage and acceptance of the "miniature laboratory" becomes more widespread for research facilities across the globe from its current skewed usage.
The technology of the future will need to be integrated to build an environment that promotes the connectivity for the scientific community digitally, physically as well as socially.
Paradigm shifts such as these are bound to leave an indelible mark on the way the laboratory solutions market would be transformed with respect to customer demands and suppliers race to service changing needs. What makes the impact of these changing paradigms and needs more significant in our country's context is
- The rapid emergence of India as a potential R&D hub for global players:
- Increasing investments for setting up R&D centres, development facilities: AstraZeneca, Pliva, and Ivax, to name a few
- Increased outsourcing and research collaborations ? discovery, development, clinical research to India, which means more updated infrastructure capabilities to match the strengths in scientific knowledge
- The transition from reverse engineering to drug discovery and research for Indian Life Science industry participants with the impending WTO accession.
The Indian market for laboratory solutions has traditionally been dominated by the reagents and chemicals and analytical instrumentation segments. Segments such as lab design, layout planning, LIMS, automation have been non-traditional low value segments, which have garnered little demand from an industry driven by process reengineering.
Both the factors mentioned above point towards the need for the laboratory solutions market to be well-aligned to the changing paradigms given the increasing focus on India as a R&D destination and the country's domestic industry players looking at transforming their value chains in line with the global trends.
As players globally and in India shift focus onto basic research and development in the country; new centres and upgradation of current facilities have commenced. Compliance with the current trends in research tools, techniques, and regulatory requirements such as electronic submissions, traceability, radio frequency identification (RFID) and the race to retain the best shall drive the transformation of the market to cater to more lab automation, miniaturization, and integration across geographies. Influx of scientific expertise as major R&D planners bring in brainpower would also bring along the latest trends in way research is being conducted globally.
With domestic participation in the laboratory solutions market being limited to the traditional, mature market segments it shall be an uphill task not only with respect to forward integration in the value chain but also in their ability to quickly transform strategic vision and align themselves to the changing demands of key customer industries - life sciences.
- (Jayashri Kulkarni is Director - Healthcare Practice, Frost& Sullivan India. The author can be contacted at sdedhia@frost.com)