Medical Biobanking market will reach 19.1 bllion dollars in 2015.

Monday 30 January 2012, Amsterdam

A new report predicts that world medical biobanking revenues will reach $19.1bn in 2015. That market generated $9.0bn in 2010, according to Biobanking for Medicine: Technology and Market 2012-2022, published in December 2011.

The market for medical biobanking technologies and services has expanded rapidly. Biobanks form an important tool for the pharmaceutical industry, to accelerate the discovery and development of drugs. As that industry shifts to more-personalised medicine, the need for high-quality, well-maintained biospecimens intensifies. Biobanking will benefit the pharma and diagnostics industries this decade, the report shows. Many opportunities for providers and users of those services exist.

Dr Syed Ahmed, a senior healthcare industry analyst, said: “Advances in genetic and stem cell research, as well as regenerative medicine, have increased the importance of biobanking. Biobanks have been established to support medical research. Those resources will reveal genetic associations with diseases, and also lead to the development of more-personalised therapies.

At the same time, the biobanking industry faces challenges. These include a lack of standardisation and harmonisation of biobanking practices, under-use of stored biospecimens, due to limited networking among biobanks, and ethical and socio-cultural issues.”

A study forecasts that the overall market and submarkets for medical biobanking technologies and services will grow steadily to 2022. An increasing focus on personalised medicine and stem cell research in a range of therapeutic areas will stimulate the industry. Strong areas will include the human tissue banking and stem cell banking markets, the report concludes. This new work adds to a wide range of analytical research on emerging industries and markets in healthcare.