Falling costs are but one of the factors expected to drive a nearly threefold increase in the value of the global market for next-generation sequencing over the next six years, according to a new research report.
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The report, by ResearchandMarkets.com, found that the value of NGS market would increase fro $5.7 billion this year to $16.35 billion in 2024, assuming an annual growth rate of 19.2 percent. The report segmented the market by technology into sequencing by synthesis, ion semiconductor sequencing, single-molecule real-time sequencing, nanopore sequencing and others. Sequencing by synthesis is expected to command the largest share of the market this year, according to the report.
Indeed, the market has seen extensive growth in recent years, as indicated by interest from the diagnostics industry. In June, Swiss drugmaker Roche spent $2.4 billion to acquire the remaining portion of Foundation Medicine that it didn’t own already. Meanwhile, startups focused on NGS have drawn large venture capital investments as well. In May, Strata Oncology – which aims to bring NGS to health systems that lack the ability to perform it internally – netted $26 million in a Series B funding round led by the venture capital arms of drugmakers Pfizer and Merck & Co. But that was dwarfed a little more than a week earlier by Grail, which garnered a $300 million Series C financing round from several Chinese venture capital firms.
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According to the research report, factors driving the increased value of the global NGS market include declining costs for capital and sequencing, improved regulatory circumstances and reibursements for NGS diagnostics, large sequencing projects by government and private entitles and NGS’s increasing application in precision medicine and molecular diagnostics.
An example of the last factor expected to drive NGS’s growth is the rise of cancer drugs that target molecular biomarkers independent of the tissue where the cancer occurs. These include Merck’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab), which is approved for any solid tumor displaying certain genetic abnormalities in addition to its tissue-specific indications, and the efforts of Loxo Oncology, whose drug larotrectinib is targeted to Trk fusions. The Food and Drug Administration accepted Loxo’s regulatory approval application for larotrectinib in May and is expected to rule on whether or not to approve it by Nov. 26.
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