Next Generation Sequencers have found their way into service providing labs and the global biomedical research community. 2010 has seen a serious uptake of Next Generation Sequencing technology, and today it is perceived as an indispensable tool.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the market for Next Generation Sequencing earned revenues of $746 million in 2010 and estimates this to reach $3 billion by 2017 worldwide.
“Key applications previously performed by Microarrays are now being replaced by Next Generation Sequencers,” observes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst, Ms Divyaa Ravishankar. “At the same time, governments encourage the uptake of the NGS technology by facilitating a steady stream of funding.”
Both suppliers and end users have shown immense interest in driving the technology towards diagnostics applications, where it is expected to play a significant role in the next two years. However, the research realm is harnessing most benefit of Next Generation Sequencing.
The most important challenges for the technology to remain successful though, is the increase in data volume, which requires efficient data management systems as well as the interpretation and validation of new and complex findings. In order to be able to cope with the plethora of information generated through NGS, new bioinformatic software and tools are necessary. Suppliers are therefore trying to close strategic partnerships with companies offering bioinformatics solutions.
“The growing dynamism and inventiveness has resulted in the rapid uptake of Next Generation Sequencing Technology,” says Ms Ravishankar. “Near-term challenges will be the development of robust and extensive protocols for generating sequencing libraries, building effective new approaches for the purpose of data analysis as well as lowering the cost to sequence a human genome.” She concludes: “NGS enables a comprehensive analysis of genomes, transcriptomes, interactomes and will become an inexpensive and a widespread tool.”
Frost & Sullivan
