Electrophoresis Technology: Global Markets

According to a new technical market research report, Electrophoresis Technology: Global Markets (MST040B) from BCC Research, the global market for electrophoresis technology will be worth $1.3 billion in 2008. This is expected to increase to over $1.6 billion by the end of 2013, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8%.

The market is broken down into applications of gel electrophoresis (GE) and capillary electrophoresis (CE). GE holds a commanding 64.5% share of the market and is estimated to be worth $829 million in 2008. The presence of a high installed base for these systems is likely to influence modest growth in this segment, and it should reach $1.0 billion by the end of 2013, for a CAGR of 3.9%.

Agarose and polyacrylamide gels are the commonly used modes in GE. Since a majority of the applications use polyacrylamide gels, this segment dominated the overall GE market with a 79% share in 2007.

Genomics applications have fuelled the demand for GE systems in the past. The ongoing quest to unravel the human proteome is providing the impetus for protein GE predominantly carried out by the two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D PAGE) method. Expanding proteomics research pursuits have deemed 2D PAGE/ slab gel technique as the most reliable platform, owing to its ability to resolve and measure post-translational modified protein entities.

CE technology continues to make inroads in the separation market with estimated revenue of $456 million in 2008. It is expected to reach $620 million in 2013, for a CAGR of 6.3%.

The demonstration of superior separation efficiency along with full automation, ease of miniaturization and on-line detection capabilities has enabled CE to carve a niche in the separation technology market. In addition, the emergence of highly sensitive laser-induced fluorescent detection method has spurred new applications for CE.