Single-use bioreactors market will expand this decade

Thursday 1 August 2013, Amsterdam

A new report forecast that the world market for disposable bioreactor technology for pharmaceuticals will expand from 2012 to 2022. That projection appears in Single-Use Bioreactors for Pharma: World Market 2012-2022, published in April 2012.

In the past 10 years, single-use bioprocess technologies have helped in the development and production of biopharmaceuticals. These technologies and accessories play important roles in early biopharma development and upstream processing, as well as commercial production of biomolecules. Their use will increase from 2012, the study notes.

We predict that overall revenues from the technologies will show strong growth from 2012 to 2022, with many commercial opportunities arising. Single- and limited-use units (bioprocess disposables) are becoming more important in the development and production of biopharmaceuticals. There will be a shift away from traditional biomanufacturing systems as newer, more-convenient disposable systems reach the biopharma industry from 2012 onwards.

Dr Syed Ahmed, a senior healthcare industry analyst at visiongain, explains: “Most experts agree that single-use equipment will become widely available for end-to-end bioprocessing across all production scales. Estimates suggest that 50% of GMP production of biomolecules already uses disposable technologies. That trend will continue as these technologies mature and prove their cost effectiveness, especially for downstream operations.

“For single-use bioreactors, the industry expects a transition from manual to automated, smart, single-use bioreactor systems having feed based on real time in-situ measurements. Scale is no longer an issue; disposable bioreactors of 2000L capacity and higher are available to pharma companies. Biopharmaceutical producers seek to operate multiple (500-2000L) batches. Availability of high titres permits this and also reduces the risk of batch loss for manufacturers. Those trends make single-use bioreactors important for bioprocessing and GMP operations.”

The new report provides revenue forecasts to 2022 at world market, submarket and national level. Its research, data and analyses cover activities of GE Healthcare, Thermo Scientific, Sartorius Stedim and other providers of bioprocess technologies. In addition to forecasting the overall world market for the topic, the analysis predicts revenue trends for two main submarkets: hardware modules and systems; and disposables and accessories.

Our investigation involves assessing R&D activities, interviewing authorities on the industry and predicting disposable bioreactor revenues in leading national markets. Countries analysed are the US, Japan, the EU5, China and India.