The market potential of next generation drug hepatotoxicity screening platforms.

• Main Author: Chin, Pei Hui.
• Other Authors: School of Biological Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48794
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Drug development is costly and expensive. Despite increased investments in the pharmaceutical industry, there remains a concomitant productivity gap due to high drug attrition rate during late clinical trials. With unforeseen human hepatotoxicity a key factor contributing to the high drug attrition rate, there is a pressing need to improve on traditional pre-clinical in-vitro drug hepatotoxicity screening platforms (IVHSPs) to prevent further wastage of limited resources, which is done by emerging technologies such as tissue engineering. This paper aims to investigate the market potential of these improved next-generation IVHSPs by surveying the in-vitro ADME/Tox market and the CROs market and identify current trends, challenges and opportunities within these markets. Despite difficult challenges within both markets, the long-term need to increase the number of drugs within the drug development pipeline, together with the structural shift of drug discovery outsourcing will drive long-term growth of both markets, increasing the market potential of these new generation IVHSPs. In addition, this paper also investigated the marketability of locally invented IVHSPs by investigating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within Singapore’s biomedical sector. With strong local research infrastructure and trade-oriented economy, locally invented IVHSPs can be pushed into emerging markets within the region, increasing marketability.