Bioinformatics Market Growing in Europe

Based on current trends, the total European Bioinformatics market is set to expand from nearly U.S.$310 million in 2004 to $720 million by 2011, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan (Palo Alto, CA, USA), a global consulting company.

With the quantity of genetic and protein data reaching quadrillion bytes, scientists are finding it difficult to collect and analyze all that data. At the same time, the limited value of stand-alone data sets has triggered the search for tools that can help researchers study disparate data in the same conceptual framework. High throughput systems are augmenting the yield of promising drug compounds, making bioinformatics, which fulfills these multiple needs, more appealing.

Dwindling drug pipelines, a lack of blockbuster drugs, and the anticipated patent expires of existing drugs are compelling the pharmaceutical industry to develop tools that increase drug research productivity, accelerate drug discovery, and reduce R&D expenditures. In the short term, bioinformatics will become a vibrant segment in the drug discovery tools market, with competition ready to intensify as profitability levels rise. The governments of many European countries, such as Germany and the United Kingdom, have taken initiatives to promote the benefits of bioinformatics and have increased their overall R&D investments.

Proteomics is expected to have the highest growth potential within the bioinformatics market. The information-manipulation segment is expected to maintain its current revenue contribution levels, about 40%, to the overall market until 2011, while the genomics software tools segment is likely to exhibit low growth.

"With the tools not as user-friendly as they are required to be, the critical need is to facilitate their transfer from trained users to those performing the actual research on the workbench,” said Raghavendra Chitta, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "In the long run, if tools are put in the hands of the actual users, the entire user base will increase, making it an attractive proposition for the bioinformatics companies.”




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