Molecular Diagnostics Emerging Rapidly for Routine Patient Care

The success of molecular diagnostics will result from the commercialization of rapid, user-friendly, inexpensive, and high-quality tests and, together with the discovery of molecular-based therapeutics, will allow for more individualized disease management.

The entire spectrum of disease management, from the early detection of disease, to defining the prognosis of disease evolution and predicting a patient's response to specific therapies will soon be transformed by molecular medicine.

As DNA-based diagnostic and therapeutic interventions come to market and are proven economically valuable, physicians will begin to rely on them for treating their patients. This will propel the molecular testing market, valued at US $3.7 billion in 2007, into double-digit annual growth through 2012.

Roche's (Basel, Switzerland) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology has dominated molecular testing since the mid-1980s. New technologies will soon take over from PCR--these include bead arrays, electrochemical arrays, microarrays, SNP-it. Products will need to be easily miniaturized and simplified for use in routine laboratories. New products offer faster turnaround of test results and standardization of a large menu of tests on a single platform. This is speeding the adoption of molecular assays in routine patient care.

The report was made available by Kalorama (Rockville, MD, USA), which provides independent market research in the life sciences, as well as a full range of custom research services. "The new molecular assays, techniques, and test services that have emerged in the past few years are directly related to the genomic information culled from sequencing the human genome and pathogenic organisms," noted Kalorama information analyst, Shara Rosen. "By the time DNA assays become part of the routine fabric of laboratory medicine in 2010 or so, it is expected that physicians around the world will rely on molecular assays in the treatment of their patients."

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