European market for biomarkers is growing rapidly

This is, say the analysts, an early growth stage market with significant potential. Although biomarker testing in itself is inexpensive, the process of biomarker discovery and assay development is costly, and there is a lag between the discovery of biomarkers in the laboratory and their commercialisation, due to major roadblocks in biomarker validation and assay development.

“Currently, biomarker testing is sporadic and mainly restricted to large biotech and pharma companies,” said Rasika Ramachandran, Senior Research analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “Although the regulators are gradually mandating biomarker testing for widespread adoption by all tiers of biotech and pharma companies, most pharma companies need to find a way to converge the drug development workflow with the biomarker development workflow to facilitate cost-effective and accessible biomarker testing."

The integration of the workflows is happening, but at a slow pace. A workable solution is expected to be reached by the pharmaceutical industry in the next five or more years to come.

For now, cancer biomarkers and cardiovascular biomarkers are showing the fastest growth, with central nervous system (CNS) biomarkers not far behind, mainly due to a tremendous thrust in Alzheimer’s disease biomarker research.

Frost & Sullivan says the biomarker analysis market is set to grow exponentially for most of the next seven years, except in the short-term where growth rates are affected by the economic slowdown.

In order to get a quicker return-on-investment, all the benefactors of biomarker discovery and development should share development costs, says the report. “Although the task of uniting the entire industry towards this cause is a formidable one, at present this seems to be the only solution to the challenge of making biomarker testing reach every drug discovery lab,” concludes Ramachandran.