Global Bioinformatics Market Expected to Hit USD 7.5 Billion by 2017

The necessity to implement more cost-effective and productive techniques of commercializing proprietary data has driven the bioinformatics market.

According to a recent report from the economic and market research company BBC Research (Wellesley, MA, USA), the United States accounts for 52.8% of global sales, making it the largest market segment, whereas analytic services and data-analysis software make up the strongest growing segment increasing at a 20.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2017.

The global bioinformatics market was valued at almost USD 3.2 billion in 2012 and is predicted to grow to nearly USD 7.5 billion by 2017. The market attracts considerable funding from central governments and is fueled by applications across a variety of sectors, including biotechnology, pharmaceutical research and development, agriculture, food safety, chemicals, manufacturing, and more recently, clinical genomics.

Growth in the market has been driven by the industries’ need to adopt more cost-effective and productive methods for commercializing proprietary information. Companies are looking for suppliers that can provide complete integration of data infrastructure, which includes data sharing, data security, customization, data searching, and analysis.

Accounting for 52.8% of global sales, the United States holds the largest segment of the bioinformatics market, followed by Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Most of revenues are generated from analysis software and analytic services, which account for nearly 47.6% of revenues, although data-analysis software and analytic services comprise the strongest growing segment with a 2012-2017 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3%.

Bioinformatics tools and services play important roles in all aspects of drug discovery and development, helping to design drugs, predict drug metabolism and toxicity, and model drug-gene or drug-protein interactions. The adoption of high-throughput technologies (e.g., next-generation sequencing [NGS], RNA-Seq, microarrays, nanopore sequencing) alongside data-mining software and in silico computational, mathematic modeling, and biosimulation tools are all being applied to increase speed and accuracy, as well as to reduce the time and costs associated with data analysis and interpretation. Moreover, researchers are utilizing a more holistic systems biology approach and incorporating data from other scientific disciplines, including pharmacogenomics, toxicogenomics, epigenomics, and cheminformatics, to examine complex interactions within biologic systems and to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

In the postgenomic era, gathering biologic data is no longer a bottleneck for scientific researchers. The major hurdle remains in the efficient organization, analysis, and interpretation of the data. There are currently more than 3,000 archival and commercial databases, including large central data repositories such as GenBank (NCI), EMBl-EBI, and DDBJ. The establishment, maintenance and open access of large datasets has been important in driving this field forward, as they have allowed researchers throughout the world to find new ways to analyze and interpret information into new knowledge. The bioinformatic tools and database services segment of the market generated more than USD 1.5 billion in 2012, and is forecast to grow to USD 3.4 billion by 2017, with a 2012-2017 CAGR of 17.9%.

Raw data are worthless without a framework. The ultimate goal of bioinformatics is to gather knowledge from large-scale data. There are currently hundreds of software tools available online, many of which were developed by leading academic institutions and are freely available, enabling researchers to undertake sequencing, alignment, structure, and function analysis for a range of biologic data.

Commercial software platforms are available that can handle that analysis of petabytes of NGS data such as Astrid’s GenoMiner, Biobase BD’s Genome Trax, GeneCodes Corp.’s SeQuencher, and SoftGenetics’ NextGENe. More comprehensive software solutions are available from some of the larger players that enable analysis, visualization, and formulation of diverse datasets to improve dissemination of results to researchers. These include Accelrys’, Pipeline Pilot, DNAStars’ Lasergene Suite, and Genomatix’s Software Suite, among others. The data analysis and software market generated more than USD 1.1 billion in 2012, and it is forecast to grow to nearly USD 2.9 billion by 2017, with a 2012-2017 CAGR of 20.3%.

More data are being collected than can be physically stored; the storage gap is widening, and selecting which data to archive has become a major issue. During the last 30 years, information technology (IT) infrastructure has become more integrated, and it has rapidly evolved from a computer cluster model to a cloud-computing platform that allows computational capacity to be purchased as a service from a cloud-computing provider. Researchers can tap into a network of virtual machines (VMs) without the need to own or maintain their own hardware. The IT hardware and infrastructure market generated nearly USD 532 million in 2012, and is forecast to grow to nearly USD 1.2 billion by 2017, with a 2012-2017 CAGR of 17.2%.

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BBC Research