A new market research report forecasts that the DNA diagnostics market will be worth $19 billion globally by 2020.

That represents a compound annual growth rate of 9.8% from 2014 to 2020, according to Allied Market Research that issued the report.

The promise of personalized medicine, which is based on understanding disease through gene analysis, has gotten a big boost through next-generation gene sequencing analysis. Illumina has brought the world the so-called $1,000 genome dramatically reducing the cost of gene sequencing thereby making the movement of genomics medicine from the research field into the clinical domain a bit closer to reality.

Key challenges remain, but the hope is that by unlocking the relationship between genetic variation and disease states, drug and diagnostic companies can develop tests and medications that can diagnose people quickly, and treat them more effectively based on their genetic makeup.

"Next generation sequencing not only reduces the cost of sequencing, but increases the throughput as well; it could thus help in bridging the gaps in traditional and personalized medications", said AMR analyst Sharayu Dhabale, in a news release discussing the report.

The potential to provide accurate diagnosis in a cost effective manner over traditional diagnostic techniques that may not help in accurate and quick diagnosis is a factor that is supplementing the growth of the DNA diagnostics market, the report suggests.

In terms of revenue, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology holds the largest share of the DNA diagnostics market.

And in terms of geography, North America holds the largest share though Asia-Pacific will see a lot of growth between 2020 and 2025 because of large undiagnosed populations and increase in per capital expenditure. 

-- By Arundhati Parmar, Senior Editor, MD+DI
[email protected]