Increasing commercial applications and expanding applications in basic research are fuelling the demand for laboratory chemical reagents, according to a report. Owing to constant refinements and advances in technologies such as cell culture, recombinant DNA and bio-therapeutics that facilitated the production of several vital human therapeutic agents, the laboratory chemical reagents market has witnessed robust growth over the years. Apart from this the emerging disciplines such as neurosciences and proteomics offer potential growth opportunities for the laboratory chemical reagents market.
At the same time biotechnology reagents and supplies represent one of the high growth markets. Especifically, the market for DNA sequencing and protein synthesis reagents has increased dramatically in recent times. Since biotechnology is an industry based on diverse scientific and engineering processes, it has broad inter-industry applications and as such can be integrated into research and production operations of several industries.
The biotechnology reagent market is vast. It consists of several technologies such as PCR, cell culture, IVD, expression and transfection, chromatography, spectrometry, electrophoresis, and flow cytometry. The global biotechnology reagents market was valued at $40.3 billion in 2011 and is expected to reach $59.3 billion by 2016; growing at a CAGR of eight per cent from 2011 to 2016.
The biotechnology reagents market is driven by the increasing use of reagents in therapeutics, basic research and commercial applications. The demand for biotechnology reagents is mainly dependent upon the growth of the biotechnology instrumentation market.
The biotechnology instrumentation market continues to witness significant growth due to an increase in the number of biotechnology firms around the globe and increase in research and development expenditure by the biotechnology companies. Continual product developments are being witnessed in various industries, such as pharmaceutical/bio-pharmaceutical, agri-biotech, and food and beverages; this is expected to facilitate market growth.
North America dominated the biotechnology reagents market with 46.28 per cent share in 2011. Successful completion of the first phase of the Human Genome Project, ahead of schedule, has given rise in the US reagent market. Investments, government funding, and new products are driving the reagents market in the US. The Asian market, however, shows greater opportunities, when compared to other regions, with the highest CAGR of 11.8 per cent from 2011 to 2016; due to increased research outsourcing activities in the life technology field.
Growth in cell culture manufacturing is mainly ascribed to improved production and development in the biopharmaceuticals industry. Reagents, sera and media used for biomanufacturing, process development and research, represent the major factors driving up growth in the cell culture-manufacturing sector. Innovations in the cell culture market would be driven by basic level biomedical research.
Asian markets are key contributors the global sales of cell culture products. The region’s considerable share in the global revenues of sera, media and reagents is attributed to factors such as higher sales infrastructure investment by leading players in Japan and China, biomanufacturing demand, and increasing interest in stem cell research.
Biotechnology reagents are the substances or chemical compound that is added to a system to detect, examine or synthesize other substances. Biotechnology industry mainly combines cellular and molecular biotechnology, human immunology and genetics, focusing mainly upon research and innovations in recombinant DNA technology or genetic engineering. Growth of such industries mainly depends on innovative products. Hence, all this attributes growth opportunities for related markets such as reagents, which depends to a large extent on the market for biotechnology industries. Some of the major areas of application are pharmaceutical and agricultural industry.
Over the past few years biotechnology industry has grown immensely and is expected to continue this growth trend for the next few years to come. Major factors boosting the biotechnology reagents market includes increasing use of reagents in commercial applications, therapeutics and basic research. Other factors driving the growth of this market are increasing numbers of biotechnology firms and heavy investment in R & D activities.
DNA chips, proteomics, high throughput screening, and combinatorial chemistry, are few emerging sectors in drug discovery arena which will further boost the market growth due to increased usage of reagents. Moreover, popularity of highly automated instrumentation to some extent will restrain the market growth. As automated instrumentation is highly efficient and results in optimal utilization of reagents thus reducing wastage of the reagents consumed.
The RNAi reagent/research materials industry is an established market, fully capable of supplying the research needs of the relative biotechnology drug development market.
Conveyance of drugs to target cellular areas is a fundamental element in the discovery and administration of therapeutics, and RNAi research is effectively using intelligence obtained from the study of the successes and limitations of genomics, small molecule, antisense and ribozyme platforms to expand and manage an operative method to identify and validate a broad base of drug targets.
Current undertakings that imply a proactive posture of the reagent sector to continue to be a driver of the overall RNAi market are the efforts that are focusing on expanding the number of human genes targeted by existing and forthcoming gene silencing libraries.
Any stagnation in the reagent segment would have a direct and immediate effect on the RNAi drug development market given the latter's dependence of the former.
The existence and resultant accomplishment of the research tools sector eliminates the need and expense for therapeutics companies to develop their own
gene libraries and maintain their own programs and even offers a contract research source.
The reagents used in gene silencing have proven themselves effective beyond earlier technologies by showing an ability to degrade or knock out function in any gene once the sequence for that gene is known; as a result, the demand for RNAi laboratory kits and related tools that facilitate research has risen, along with the number of researchers who are using the mechanism to classify gene function and control gene expression.
The biggest impact the reagent industry may have contributed to the overall RNAi market is the trailblazing it has accomplished in establishing an increasing relationship with big pharma, with several reagent providers having brokered supply, licensing or research agreements over the past two years with pharmaceutical giants such as Bayer Corporation, Merck & Co. Inc., Eli Lilly & Co. and Abbott Laboratories Inc.
Such deals involving reagent businesses almost certainly portend the eventual collaboration of big pharma-biotech in comparative RNAi therapeutic development applications that would have the potential and proclivity to cultivate relationships with blockbuster implications in areas such as drug pipeline schedule acceleration, license fees and R&D sponsorship.
Pharmaceutical companies have begun to dabble in RNAi research by slightly infusing siRNA experimentation into some of their drug discovery agendas, but should be ready to get more involved as the technology takes off.
Their current involvement consists primarily of modifying some internal R&D programs to accommodate RNAi drug discovery, giving a boost to the reagent market in the form of a steady increase in orders for related research products.
An additional opportunity for growth in this market will become possible with the expected increase in the number of companies that abandon rival antisense and ribozyme programs once they consider the advantages of efficiency and reliability RNAi technology is proving to offer over the two mechanisms.
The reagent/research materials market is profoundly acknowledged and accountable for its contribution to the successful start of the RNAi general market, supplying the majority of the industry with reliable, guaranteed life science tools that are necessary for the laboratory, and soon-to-be clinical application of research work.
The progression of the overall RNAi market has never been hampered by the need to wait on the research materials supply segment to draw level to the drug development technology, and now, as the therapeutic clinical drug development race heats up, the research tools market is ready for human trials, with applicable products on the market to address relative trials for every human gene in the National Center for Biotechnology Information Reference Sequence database (NCBI RefSeq).
It is estimated that an additional 10,000-15,000 new drug targets for several diseases will be identified as a result of the sequencing of the human genome, opening a window of opportunity for the reagent market to grow in target validation applications.