Drug Discovery Technologies

• The global market for drug discovery technologies increased from $20.2 billion in 2006 to an estimated $22 billion in 2007. It should reach $32.5 billion by 2012, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2%.
• High throughput screening has the largest share of the market, worth an estimated $8.5 billion in 2007, and is expected to reach $12 billion by 2012, a CAGR of 7.1% over the forecast period.
• While informatics has the smallest share of the market, worth $725 million in 2007, the segment will see the largest CAGR of 15.7%, as its value rises to $1.5 billion by 2012.

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS

• New methods for drug discovery and delivery are receiving considerable attention in the pharmaceutical industry and in the media. Trial-and-error discovery methods have been replaced by focused combinatorial synthesis, high throughput systems, and other advanced systems. These new methods have produced agents that have entered clinical trials. As a result of the new technologies, costs and development times are falling, and knowledge about each new agent's mode of action has increased.
• This updated BCC study examines how the new drug discovery technologies have affected costs and drug development times. It also analyzes how new screening technologies, DNA microarrays, and increasingly sophisticated instruments will affect pharmaceutical discovery. An important section of the report analyzes market sizes and market growth for each technology. The report also includes interviews with executives in the instruments industry and the combinatorial chemistry industry.
• Molecular biology has given scientists detailed knowledge about basic and complex biological processes. One result of this new knowledge has been an explosion in the development of sophisticated pharmaceutical agents. For example, the number of drug candidates that have been screened in the last ten years has increased by three orders of magnitude: in 1990, approximately 500,000 drug compounds were screened; for the year 2000, that number is estimated at 1.5 billion.