Beyond Expression Arrays: Emerging Applications for Genomic Microarray Technology - Biologics Market Research

Beyond Expression Arrays: Emerging Applications for Genomic Microarray Technology
Beachhead Consulting
Sep 2006
Price: EUR? 4,602.00
The expectation that microarray technology will play a large role in shaping the future of pharmaceutical development and diagnostics has greatly increased due to new products and applications. To date, microarrays for gene expression have made a profound impact in the pharmaceutical and biomedical worlds. Looking forward, information from newer microarray technologies such as CGH, ChIP-on-chip, splice variants, and microRNAs, combined with gene expression data, can be applied to the drug discovery process enabling many exciting applications, such as finding cures for infectious diseases, discovering the mechanisms involved in cancer and finding treatments with fewer side effects.
The impact of these new microarray applications on the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries is examined in this report and reveals the market for the latest products and technologies as potentially one of the fastest growing segments of the life sciences market.
The report is based on in-depth interviews of leading scientific researchers and biotechnology executives and presents the current applications and products contributing to the development of tools for clinical and pharmacological applications. Companies interviewed for this report include Affymetrix, Agilent, Bristol Myers Squibb, Combimatrix, GE Health Sciences (formerly Amersham Biosciences), Genentech, Nanogen, Nimblegen, Roche, The Scripps Research Institute, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
The commercial adoption potential for these technologies, given pharmaceutical objectives and trends, are presented. Applications and market potential are addressed separately as each new product must prove itself not only with biological relevance, compelling and reliable data but with ease of use, fit with the user workflow and most importantly, automation. Market growth can occur rapidly for companies that have taken the time to understand both the application and the workflow. If an application is utilized only once during a discovery program, in the case, for example, of a ChIP/Chip experiment, the potential market for the technologies and products enabling the application is much smaller. The SNP market is the furthest along this path with the current market at about $400M with a potential for growth in the next 5 years to $1B.
Of all the applications discussed in this report, SNP profiling is the only one that has been widely adopted. It could be considered ?old hat? by most users and researchers, however, it serves as a good model for the development and introduction of other technologies. Companies involved in development of new applications must work closely with their target customers, namely pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostic research and development groups, to determine if and how to deliver these technologies. ?If you compare today with five years ago, the microarray field is accepted, including the fact that arrays are expensive but the information is appreciated. Today, arrays are part of many drug development projects, such as toxicogenomics or biomarker discovery. I think the biggest need in the future is automation and high throughput,? predicts one functional genomics director at a top five pharmaceutical company.
New work with ChIP-on-chip technology, for example, can examine transcription factor binding by scanning through the whole genome to find all the representative binding sites, then subsequently focus on running arrays that only contain their genes of interest. ?As gene expression demonstrates regulation, ChIP-on-chip can tell what is causing the regulation and point out the regulatory network. Scientists are realizing that not much information was learned from gene expression (alone). Now with more integrated studies, taking ChIP-on-chip data and coupling it to gene expression data, more information is obtainable about what causes the regulation. Correlating the two provides exciting insights?, said Dr. Sameer Rohatgi, Marketing Manager for DNA Products at Agilent Technologies.
We look to the next three years as a new time of separating the chaff from the wheat in terms of these new, exciting applications transitioning from research into routine use and application to large samples for profiling.
This report details the current and potential market dynamics for each new microarray application, particularly as the industry is now looking for more, relevant data to drive drug development programs, both for profit and a basic need to understand and treat disease.