Briefs

NEW YORK, Jan. 21 - Faster and cheaper technologies will help the worldwide bioinformatics market double in size over the next five years and reach $1.7 billion, according to an industry analysis.

Consisting of the content, analysis software, and IT infrastructure provider segments, bioinformatics will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent, with the largest growth in the analysis software segment," said the report, called Bioinformatics, A Strategic Market Analysis. The bioinformatics market at the end of 2001, the latest available year, was worth roughly $697 million, according to Front Line.

"Large volume data mining and the need for analysis and visualization tools to support complex analysis, such as relationship modeling, will drive the $202 million analysis software segment to grow to $634 million in 2006," the analysis predicts. It found that new bioinformatics applications might cut the cost of drug discovery by one-third and accelerate the process by 2 years.

The report, produced by Front Line Strategic Consulting, also found that although the genomics space is currently the richest consumer of bioinformatics tools and technology, "the most significant growth opportunities" will be in proteomics and pharmacogenomics, which will garner $469 million and $351 million, respectively, in 2006.

See http://www.genomeweb.com/articles/view.asp?Article=2002121104313