How is Increasing Focus on Personalized Medicine Driving Cancer/Tumor Profiling Market?
Every year, over 9.5 million people die as result of cancer, as per the World Health Organization (WHO), thereby becoming one of the major reasons for human mortality around the world. The disease, which is most prominently characterized by the presence of tumors, forms when a mutation (undesirable change) in a gene or protein causes a particular type of cell to divide faster than the rate of the normal cell death, thereby resulting in the growth of a visible mass. For effective treatment, merely detecting the tumor within the body is not enough; its nature and the exact mutation which caused it also need to be studied.
Therefore, owing to the increasing number of people suffering from this disease and the high focus on deeply studying its various aspects, in order to device an effective therapy, the cancer/tumor profiling market is growing around the world. Several technologies, including quantitative polymerase chain reaction (QPCR), next-generation sequencing (NGS), in-situ hybridization (ISH), immunohistochemistry (IHC), and microarray, are used to study the tumors. Of these, NGS has been the most widely preferred till now, on account of its ability to quickly detect the sequencing of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in the genome.
This is concurrent with the fact that among the genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and epigenetics techniques, genomics is the most widely used one. As the root cause of the cancer can be determined by studying which gene mutated and how, targeted therapies can be devised. Such analysis can also help ascertain if the patient would be at risk of a relapse. All these techniques and technologies find application in diagnostics, personalized medicine, prognostics, and biomarker discovery. Among these, they are most heavily utilized for personalized medicine, which becoming increasingly popular among cancer patients.
Another important application area of cancer/tumor profiling is biomarker discovery. A biomarker is any substance against which the reaction of a disease is studied to determine its nature and severity. The most common biomarkers are antigens, which help detect the presence of infections. Seeing the rising complexities in cancer diagnosis, many biotechnology firms are coming up with innovative biomarkers for effective diagnosis. For instance, several biomarkers have been developed by Caris Life Sciences, by using ISH, IHC, and NGS, for the detection of translocation, protein expression, and fusion levels, analysis of gene amplification and deletion, and broad detection and rapid examination of DNA mutations.
Presently, the most productive cancer/tumor profiling market is North America, on account of the heavy investments in cancer research and therapy areas. Moreover, numerous technological advancements are taking place in the healthcare industry of the region, which are resulting in the introduction of more-advanced profiling techniques. In the region, the prevalence of common as well as rare cancers is rising, which is leading to increasing complexities in the diagnosis procedure. Asia-Pacific (APAC) would witness the fastest increase in the adoption of cancer/tumor profiling approach in the immediate future, due to the increasing government funding for cancer research and treatment, as well as rising cases of the disease.
Therefore, on account of the improvements in diagnosis methods, the demand for cancer/tumor profiling products and services will keep surging.
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