Biomarkers' Role in Reducing Drug Development Time and Costs to Boost the European Biomarker Analysis Market, Notes Frost & Sullivan

LONDON, February 9 - Biomarker analysis market has excellent growth potential. The 'omics'
revolution of the last decade has ensured that the field of biomarker
research will test the frontiers of biomedical research in the coming years.
Biomarkers have a multitude of applications such as early disease detection,
identifying potential drug targets, predicting patient response to medication
and accelerating clinical trials. Along with its role in making personalised
medicine a reality, this technology enjoys priority in terms of funding and
investments. The promise of biomarkers to shorten drug development time and
decrease costs in the long-term is likely to act in tandem to spur growth in
the biomarker analysis market.

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New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (www.drugdiscovery.frost.com),
European Biomarker Analysis Market, finds that market earned revenues of
$694.00 million in 2008 and estimates this to reach $2202.00 million in 2015.
This is an early growth stage market with significant potential. The
applications covered in this research are genomics, proteomics and
metabolomics.

If you are interested more information on this study, please send an
e-mail to Katja Feick, Corporate Communications, at katja.feick@frost.com,
with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail
address, company website, city, state and country.

Although biomarker testing in itself is inexpensive, the process of
biomarker discovery and assay development is costly. There is a lag between
the discovery of biomarkers in the laboratory and commercialisation, due to
major roadblocks in biomarker validation and assay development. Target
validation, high-throughput compound screening and lead discovery are
processes that take place as a separate workflow whereas biomarker discovery,
assay development and much later testing, are a parallel workflow. The union
between these two workflows is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for
biomarker testing to go mainstream. Since the costs involved with managing
two parallel workflows for one drug development programme are high, only the
pharmaceutical leviathans with the needed financial backing can successfully
implement this model.

"Currently, biomarker testing is sporadic and mainly restricted to large
biotech and pharma companies," explains Frost & Sullivan Senior Research
Analyst Rasika Ramachandran. "Although the regulators are gradually mandating
biomarker testing for widespread adoption by all tiers of biotech and pharma
companies, most pharma companies need to find a way to converge the drug
development workflow with the biomarker development workflow to facilitate
cost-effective and accessible biomarker testing."

The integration of the workflows is happening, albeit at a slow pace. A
workable solution is expected to be reached by the pharmaceutical industry in
the next five or more years to come.

For now, cancer biomarkers and cardiovascular biomarkers have been found
to have the greatest growth among the disease areas. Central nervous system
(CNS) biomarkers are also not far behind and have been found to have
excellent growth potential mainly due to the tremendous thrust in Alzheimer's
biomarker research.

The biomarker analysis market is set to grow exponentially for most of
the next seven years except in the short-term where growth rates have been
predicted with caution and conservativeness to factor in any reduction in
growth due to the on-going financial slowdown.

In order to get a quicker return-on-investment, all the benefactors of
biomarker discovery and development should share development costs as the
resulting biomarker will be beneficial to all involved. This can help to
lower the biomarker development costs significantly and make it more
accessible to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.

"Although the task of uniting the entire industry towards this cause is a
formidable one, at present this seems to be the only solution to the
challenge of making biomarker testing reach every drug discovery lab,"
concludes Ramachandran. "The long-term benefits of such an undertaking will
help in justifying the efforts that are involved in making it happen."

European Biomarker Analysis Market is part of the Drug Discovery &
Clinical Diagnostics Growth Partnership Service programme, which also
includes research in the following markets: European Lab-on-chip and
Microfluidics Market and European Two Dimensional Electrophoresis Market. All
research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market
opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following
extensive interviews with market participants.

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                 European Biomarker Analysis Market
                                M3B6

    Contact:
    Katja Feick
    Corporate Communications - Europe
    P: +49-(0)-69-7703343
    E: katja.feick@frost.com

www.frost.com

Katja Feick, Corporate Communications - Europe of Frost & Sullivan, +49-(0)-69-7703343, katja.feick at frost.com