According to the International Biotechnology Forecast 2019, the global biotechnology market size will reach USD 752.88 billion by 2028, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.83%. Developed countries like India and China are adding biotechnology to their economies, resulting in favorable government initiatives to drive the market. In order to attract lucrative growth opportunities to the market, the government is implementing initiatives that aim to modernize the drug regulatory pathway, standardize clinical studies, improve reimbursement policies, and expedite the approval process for products. Furthermore, in 2019, the U.S. FDA approved 22 small molecules in the pharmaceutical compound pipeline versus eight large molecules (biotech). The increasing demand for orphan drugs and personalized medicine has caused four out of ten drugs to be biotech-derived. Thus, the revenue of the biotechnology sector is further boosted by the influx of new companies as per the global industry analysis.
Agribusiness companies are also working hard to improve existing technologies, which include increased breeding efficiency and genomic analysis to produce new germplasm and stacked traits. The agricultural industry is striving to introduce sustainable solutions to the market in order to improve productivity. As one example, BASF announced in February 2020 that by 2029, the company will launch over 30 new seed-, trait-, crop protection-, and formulations-related projects. Therefore, biotechnology techniques are widely used in agricultural products to enhance performance and increase market growth.
Moreover, COVID-19 acted as an economic stimulant. COVID-19-targeting drugs are being developed by biotech companies. Gilead Sciences, Inc. received a U.S. patent for COVID-19 just 8 months after the first case was reported. The antiviral Remdesivir has been approved for use in treating COVID-19 patients by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In addition, the growing role of the biotechnology industry in developing therapeutic molecules targeted at COVID-19 is encouraged by its collaboration with diagnostic companies, drug manufacturers and research laboratories. A collaborative project between Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE for the development of BNT162, a vaccine candidate for COVID-19, was initiated in March 2020. With the help of mRNA technology, BioNTech SE developed the COVID-19 vaccine rapidly.
Application Insights
This trend is expected to continue throughout the forecast period, with 48.64% of the market held by health applications. Growing disease prevalence is largely responsible for the growth of the segment. Additionally, Bioservices and Agri-Biotech are growing in importance, bioinformatics solutions are more frequently applied, and the bio-industrial sector is flourishing.
Furthermore, new therapeutic molecules are being developed through partnerships, which help drive the market. Amgen, for example, partnered with Adaptive Biotechnologies in April 2020 to develop antibodies that would combat COVID-19. For creating new antiviral medicines against SARS-CoV-2, Adaptive will harness its immunology platform for finding virus-neutralizing antibodies and Amgen’s expertise in new antibody therapies.
Increasing alliances to coordinate and advance informatics tools is expected to drive the fastest CAGR of 21.2% in the bioinformatics application segment from 2021 to 2028. Atom wise and GC Pharma are partnering up to find new treatments for hemophilia in September 2020. In addition to replacement therapies, the companies will examine other options for treating hemophilia. With Atom wise’s AI platform, AtomNet, around 16 billion compounds were screened for potential targets in less than two days.
Technology Insights
By 2020, 27.83% of the market’s share was captured by other technology. The second-largest market share in 2020 was DNA sequencing. As a result of the advanced sequencing of DNA, the segment has grown rapidly. An instrument allowing Pacific Biosciences to sequence DNA was awarded by the National Institutes of Health to the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center (BCM-HGSC) in April 2020. Efficiencies and capacities will be improved. A new sequencer can navigate through challenging human genome regions, thus making it possible for humans to sequence their genomes in their entirety.
Due to technological advancements in the field of nanotechnology, nanobiotechnology is expected to expand at a CAGR of 16.8% from 2021 to 2028. To cite one example, Oxford Nanopore and NVIDIA collaborated in January 2021 to incorporate a high-throughput sequencing system by NVIDIA, the DGX Station A100. With such tools, DNA and RNA sequencing can occur with greater speed and accuracy for increased access to Nanopore data.
