Molecular Diagnostics Market to Soar in Europe

Driven by the emerging cancer and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markets as well as existing infectious disease technologies, the overall market is forecast to soar from U.S.$442 million in 2004 to $911 million in 2011, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan (Palo Alto, CA, USA), a global consulting company.

As automation technology continues to improve, high-throughput processing spreads, and new solutions emerge, molecular diagnostic assays are set to account for an even larger portion of the IVD market.

"Early disease detection prevention is the main emphasis of molecular diagnostics,” noted Dr. Fiona Rahman, a healthcare analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "Successful campaigns encouraging populations to be screened for diseases have slowed the rate of incidence of new cases, improved patient care, and offered people earlier therapeutic options.”

In addition to earlier detection, molecular diagnostics reduce costs by minimizing labor deployments and lowering the use of reagent volumes, while holding out the prospect of consolidating test and testing platforms. However, obstacles still exist in terms of commercialization, approval, reimbursement, competition, and justifying higher prices. Also, the price of equipping a laboratory to perform molecular testing can require a significant expenditure. In addition, some molecular tests can be two to 10 times more expensive than equivalent immunoassays. These costs are likely to limit usage levels.

Infectious disease testing currently accounts for more than 75% of total molecular diagnostics revenues. This amount is likely to shrink as the market share of cancer and pharmacogenomics diagnostics expands. Currently, larger companies dominate the molecular testing sector.

"To maintain competitiveness, companies need to focus on developing technologies that exhibit higher specificity and reliability than those currently available,” said Dr. Rahman. "Developing integrated systems that combine sample preparation and detection processes will also determine future market success.”




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