Companion diagnostics (CDx) is a key part of the growing sector of personalized, or “precision,” medicine. The current personalized medicine sector consists of diagnostic and therapeutic segments, and encompasses pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostic companies, has annual revenue of more than $30 billion and it is expected to grow by at least 10% annually.
This market is fast moving, prone to dramatic shifts in a short amount of time. As a result, we have decided to follow this market closely for the next year in a series of four updates of our March report. The analyst, and our senior editor of healthcare, Robert G. Hunter, discussed his first update with us, below.
You just published a report on companion diagnostics a couple of months ago. What changes in this short of time surprised you enough to warrant an update?
The Global Companion Diagnostics Market is growing over 30% CAGR (currently around $5 Billion) and indeed contains several drivers that are as dynamic as you could expect with a growth rate of this magnitude. These include evolving FDA regulatory requirements, an emerging myriad of drug options for certain indications (cancer) which are defining new market segmentation practices, an array of diagnostic commercialization approaches e.g. lab-developed tests (LDTs) and ‘universal CDx’ initiatives, growing physician and patient adoption of personalized and precision medicine, and hyper technology innovation for example in next-generation genomic sequencing and liquid biopsy.
You added infectious diseases this time- why?
Infectious diseases were added after recent research found a number of companies are leveraging various technologies like next-generation sequencing for infectious disease diagnosis.
Early diagnosis of antibiotic resistant bacteria is critical to providing patients optimal therapy. The only way to know which therapy will work is to test a range of antibiotics. Typical, conventional antibiotic susceptibility testing requires time consuming manual procedures, resulting in laboratory processing time that often exceeds 48 hours, leaving clinicians with incomplete information to provide definitive treatment during this critical time period.
What should we keep our eye on between now and your next quarterly update on companion diagnostics?
Some things to keep an eye on include higher growth in immuno-oncology, supporting the growth of tests using IHC (immunohistochemistry) which has been updated to be larger than previously forecasted.
Also the growth of NGS, which was revised downward a bit from previously forecasted, due to slower clinical adoption as discussed in the update.
And definitely the adoption and growth in liquid biopsy, which we’re forecasting at over 100% CAGR.
BCC Members can access these CDx report updates for free. Non-members can subscribe to this report and its quarterly updates.
