Biomarket Trends: Cell Culture Landscape Changes Rapidly

Growth in biopharmaceuticals is creating an unprecedented increase in demand for cell culture products. Cell culture techniques have been used in biological sciences for more than 50 years; however, cell culture applied to production systems has been around for only half that time. The cell culture industry, which began in the late 1980s from the utilization of recombinant DNA technology and cell hybridization, is, today, a major underpinning of the biopharmaceutical market.

Media, sera, and reagents are the fuel that powers these cell culture manufacturing engines, and suppliers are beginning to see sales ramping up accordingly. According to Kalorama’s Cell Culture: The World Market for Media, Sera, and Reagents, the market for these products is growing at an annual rate in excess of 12% and headed for more than $2.6 billion in 2011.

Changing Market Drivers

At the same time that demand for these products is increasing, the demand is also changing. Traditional sera products are stagnant, and, increasingly, researchers and process engineers are demanding products with more rigid controls over ingredients. The emergence of serum-free media and chemically defined media shows the increasing trend toward stringent component control, which has characterized the past few years of product development.

However, more change is on the horizon. Biomedical research at the basic levels will become a major driver of innovation for the cell culture market. Biomedical research and bioprocessing have a wide range of supply needs, including high-quality media and reagents for fermentation and cell culture. In cell biology research, cell screening technology has proved to be important in finding high-producing cell lines, and research is now focused on how to predict growth characteristics of cells at an earlier stage. Progress in the future will come from processes, such as metabolic engineering, that will aid in improving cell lines, which will continue to be a main focal point of research.

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