Report describes bioinformatics market as 'explosive'

The report described the growth of bioinformatics industry as attributed to its increased usage in the pharmaceutical industry. The application of bioinformatics in drug discovery and development is expected to reduce the annual cost of developing a new drug by 33 per cent, and the time taken for drug discovery by 30 per cent.

Pharmaceutical companies are expected to increase their R&D expenditure in the future. A major portion of this R&D spending is expected to go into bioinformatics. Global drug discovery spending is estimated to increase from $19.6 billion in 2002 to $25.1 billion in 2006.

Bioinformatics is used in many areas of life sciences such as drug discovery, molecular medicine, microbial genome applications, agriculture, comparative studies and others. Bioinformatics contributes to these areas of the life sciences industry through its applications in research fields such as genomics, proteomics.

The contribution of genomics in the drug discovery and development process is anticipated to be the highest in the near future, as most of the new drug design in the long term is anticipated to be genomics-related. However, after human genome mapping, the application of proteomics is expected to increase at a higher rate than that of genomics, as it is proteins, not genes, which will be targeted by researchers in the coming years for developing new drugs.

According to the report, the fastest growing market in bioinformatics industry is expected to be analysis software and services, primarily driven by the need for improved and sophisticated tools for analysing and using biological data for developing therapeutic drugs.

Scientists are acquiring genomics data through the use of techniques such as amplification, DNA microarray expression, real-time PCR and genotyping. Instrumentation, hardware and software are then required to analyse, integrate and transmit this vast amount of data, which has resulted in significant IT challenges for those in the field.

The segment is estimated to grow at an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 21.2 per cent from $444.7 million in 2005 to $1.16 billion in 2010. Growth in the genomics-based content will be the key driver for the rise in genomics-based analysis software and services segment.

According to a recent survey by BioInformatics, a market research and consulting firm, Computing plays two fundamental roles in bioinformatics and computational biology.

First, computers participate in data analysis, ranging from accessing high throughput data and sequencing single nucleotide polymorphisms to analysing microarrays and experiments in proteomics. The challenge is reducing the dimensionality of these data so that scientists can understand them. To do that, computing should combine data mining with biological insight.

The content market, which comprises generalised and specialised databases, will remain the largest segment through the forecast period. Currently estimated at $717 million, this market will almost double to $1.4 billion by 2010.

Specialised databases will constitute the major part of bioinformatics content market since these databases provide data on microarrays, ESTs, SNPs, etc., which add a lot of value during drug discovery and development. As a result, the share of specialised databases in the total content market will increase from 67.6 per cent in 2005 to over 75 per cent in 2010.

IT is an indelible part of the bioinformatics industry. A number of companies, like IBM, SGI, Sun Microsystems etc, are actively working towards developing IT as a tool to expedite research and discovery. The market for IT infrastructure and other services will also continue growing, in line with the overall market.

The report: "RB-206 Bioinformatics Business: Technical Status and Market Prospects," is produced by Business Communications Company​ for the price of $3950.