Cancer/Tumor Profiling Market

Cancer/Tumor Profiling Market:- “Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally, accounting for an estimated 9.6 million deaths, or one in six deaths, in 2018…The cancer burden continues to grow globally, exerting tremendous physical, emotional and financial strain on individuals, families, communities and health systems.” These statements by the World Health Organization (WHO) aptly sum up the rampage that this disease is causing across the globe. While cancer is often oversimplified to being an “uncontrollable growth of cells”, the disease is a lot complex, with an array factors involved in its pathogenesis and proliferation.

Extensive research

To uncover what leads to the disease and what likely course it will take in a person’s body, extensive research has been conducted. The years of labor have finally resulted in the advent of something called tumor profiling, which gives a vast amount of information about the disease. It might help unearth the specific gene mutation which led to uncontrollable cell proliferation, where the tumors will likely metastasize, and which treatment someone would respond to the best. Due to the important role being played by this technique in cancer research, diagnosis, and management, the cancer/tumor profiling market seems set for rapid growth in the years to come.

Every year, over 9.5 million people die as a 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.

Various aspects

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 devise 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.

Important applications

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.

Seeing the increasing demand for cancer profiling services, biotech companies have started launching new enabling products. For instance, MDNA Life Sciences Inc. introduced the Prostate Mitomic Test in the U.S. in May 2017.

This liquid-biopsy-based test, which is available at the clinical laboratories of Helomics Corp.,

uses mitochondrial DNA’s biological characteristics to study the disease.

Similarly, the Dynamic Clinical Health Insight Platform (D-CHIP) launched by Helomics Corp.

in April 2017 helps in the in-depth analysis of the proteins, genome, RNA, and DNA of cancer patients.

Most productive market

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.

With the surge in the number of cancer cases every year,

the demand for cancer/tumor profiling is growing rapidly across the world.

Several factors such as changing lifestyles, increasing tobacco consumption,

high exposure to radiation, and poor eating habits are fueling the incidence of cancer all over the world.

For instance, the American Cancer Society stated in 2017

that the country witnessed nearly 1,688,780 new cases of cancer in that year.

Moreover, the organization predicted around 600,920 Americans will die because of cancer and the country will witness a cancer mortality rate of 1,650 persons per day from 2017 to 2023. Besides this, the growing requirement for the next generation sequencing (NGS) technology for tumor profiling is also pushing up the demand for cancer/tumor profiling around the world. Many cancer profiling organizations are developing tumor profiling kits with the help of the NGS technology.

Examples

For example, Illumina Inc. announced in June 2017 that its Extended RAS panel, which is an USFDA-approved kit.

was developed for helping clinicians and medical practitioners identify the patients that qualify for metastatic colorectal cancer treatment.

with the help of Vectibix (panitumumab).

the rapid development of biomarkers for detecting the existence of cancer cells in the body

is also propelling the demand for cancer/tumor profiling all over the world.

For example, biomarkers based on the NGS, in-situ hybridization (ISH),

and immunohistochemistry (IHC) technologies were developed by Caris Life Sciences

for identifying protein expression levels and fusions and translocations,

analyzing gene amplifications and deletion, and the broad detection and rapid examination of DNA mutation.

Due to these factors, the demand for cancer/tumor profiling is surging sharply across the world.

This is, in turn, driving the progress of the global cancer/tumor profiling market.

Proteomics, metabolomics, epigenetics, and genomics are the main types of cancer/tumor profiling techniques used all over the world. Amongst these, the demand for genomics is predicted to shoot up in the coming years. This method is used for gene characterization.

as it easily determines whether a gene in the entire genome is abnormal or normal.

The presence of abnormality in genes results in mutation, which subsequently helps cancer cells in surviving.

Geographically

Geographically, the demand for cancer/tumor profiling will soar in Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the coming years, as per the estimates of P&S Intelligence, a market research company based in India.

This will be because of the growing incidence of cancer.

the surging healthcare expenditure, and the increasing implementation of various government initiatives and policies for cancer treatment in the region.

As per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

over 1.4 million cancer cases were reported in India in 2016.

primarily because of the rising incidence of cancer, the surging healthcare expenditure.

and the mushrooming requirement for advanced cancer detecting methods in various countries.

Therefore, on account of the improvements in diagnosis methods, the demand for cancer/tumor profiling products and services will keep surging.